Floral poetry and the language of flowers

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FLORAL POFTRY

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Floral Poetry

AND

THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS

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“Gather a wreath from the garden bowers,
And tell the wish of thy heart in flowers.”

Percival.

Mention:

MARCUS WARD & CO., 67 & 68, CHANDOS STREET, STRAND

And ROYAL ULSTER WORKS, BELFAST

1877

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PRINTED BY

MARCUS WARD AND CO.

ROYAL ULSTER WORKS

Belfast

PREFACE.

HE Floral Poetry, composing the greater part

k of this book, has been selected with a view to
r? the diversified tastes of those who may peruse
r it, and consequently a variety of styles will be

found in the pieces. It is hoped, however, that
most readers will not only light here upon old
friends, but also make the acquaintance, for the
first time, of poems and fragments that will give
pleasure whenever recalled.

qr

For the liberty to insert certain poems, the Editor’s than
are due to Theodore Martin, Esq. ; Samuel Ferguson, Esq., Q.
LL.D.; Miss Agnes Rous Howell, and others. Many of the
selections are new, and are the property of the Publishers.

The First Part contains “ Poems on Flowers Generally,” and
in the Second Part will be found “ Poems on Special Flowers,”
arranged in the alphabetical order of their names to facilitate
reference.

The two Indexes of the Fanguage of Flowers have been
made most full and complete, and the Months of flowering being
introduced, it is hoped they will meet the wants of those using
them.

The Illustrations speak for themselves, and need here no
recommendation.

J. H. S.

\ •

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1ST OF AUTHORS.

Allingham, W., 57.

Anonymous, 24, 32, 50, 62, 76, 81, 98,
103, 107, 108, 116, 119, 121 , 122, 128,
138, 183, 188, 193, 198, 200, 225, 229.
Arnold, Edwin, 67.

Barton, Bernard, 79, 127, 152, 155,
172, 232.

Beaumont and Fletcher, 176.
Bidlake, 168.

Blessington, Countess of, 124.
Bowles, C., 242.

Bowring, 178.

Browne, 16, 113.

Browning, Elizabeth B., hi, 194.
Bryant, William C., 64, 112, 137, 234.
Burns, 25, 89, 161, 179.

Byron, 139.

Campbell, 60.

Carew, Thomas, 165.

Casimir, 123.

Chaucer, 88.

Clare, John, 61, jqi, 161.

Coleridge, Samuel T., 133.

Cook, Eliza, 70, 73.

Cornwall, Barry, 40, 153, 222.
Cowper, 39, 59, 136.

Dana, Richard H., 53.

Daniel, 197.

Drayton, 14.

Elliott, 48, 49, 72, 212.

Ferguson, Samuel, 115.

Fletcher, Giles, 138.

Gay, 150.

Gifford, William, 236.

Gillespie, Thomas, 186.

Gillet, Thomas, iio, 120, 143.

Good, J. Mason, 96.

Gould, H. F., 184.

Gover, Rev. Canon, 193.

G. W., 216.

Hemans, Mrs., 28, 33, 38, 44, 126, 148,

154, 180, 192.

Herrick, 45, 91, 148, 160.

Hincks, Rev. T., 219.

Hoffman, 9, 63, 201.

Holmes, O. W., 146.

Hood, 174.

Howell, Agnes R., 144, 219.

Howitt, Mary, 18, 78.

Hunter, Mrs., 163.

Hurdis, James, 145.

Jewsbury, Miss, 46.

Jonson, Ben, 149.

Keats, 20, 65, 151.

Keble, 190, 220.

Landon, L. E., 27, 68, 230.

Longfellow, 10.

Mant, Bishop, 102, 140.

Martin, Theodore, 104, 189, 228.

Milton, 18, 66.

Montgomery, 87, 92, 132, 226, 227.

Moore, 37, 54, 131, 177, 187, 215.

-4

List of Authors.

Morpeth, Lord, 130.

Moultrie, 231.

Nicoll, Robert, 30, 170.

Patterson, Mary, 75.

Patterson, Robert, 22.

Percival, 12.

Peters, William, 34.

Prior, 56.

Prior, Emma, 235.

Raleigh, 43, 232.

Ranking, B. Montgomerie, 77.
Robinson, Mary, 224.

Scott, Sir Walter, 84, 113, 233, 241.
Shakspere, 13, 117, 125, 238.
Shelley,, 26, 202, 233.

Sheridan, Mrs., 116.

Smith, Charlotte, 223.

Smith, Horace, 41.

Southey, R., 118.

Southey, Caroline, 164.

Spenser, 31, 176.

Sterling, John, 182, 185.
Strickland, Agnes, 53, 132.
Symmons, Caroline, 114.

Taylor, Miss Jane, 129.

Tighe, Mary, 134.

Tinsley, 44.

Townsend, C. H., 238.

Twamley, L. A., 55, 156, 239.

Waller, 175.

White, 162.

Wordsworth, 74, 86, 94, 97, 100, 166.

FLORAL POETRY.

PART I.—POEMS ON FLOWERS GENERALLY.

THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS.

EACH thee their language? sweet, I know no tongue,
No mystic art those gentle things declare,

I ne’er could trace the schoolman’s trick am on a
Created things, so delicate and rare :

Their language ? prythee ; why, they are themselves
But bright thoughts syllabled to shape and hue,

The tongue that erst was spoken by the elves,

When tenderness as yet within the world was new.

And oh ! do not their soft and starry eyes,

Now bent to earth, to heaven now meekly pleading,

Their incense fainting as it seeks the skies,

Yet still from earth with freshening hope receding—

Say, do not these to every heart declare,

With all the silent eloquence of truth,

Ihe language that they speak is Nature’s prayer,
lo give her back those spotless days of youth?

Hoffman .

D

Floral Poetry.

ON FLOWERS.

S PAKE full well, in language quaint and olden,
One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine,
When he called the flowers, so blue and golden,
Stars, that in earth’s firmament do shine.

Stars they are, wherein we read our history,
As astrologers and seers of eld ;

Yet not so wrapped about with awful mystery,
Like the burning stars, which they beheld.

Wondrous truths, and manifold as wondrous,
God hath written in those stars above ;

But not less in the bright flowerets under us
Stands the revelation of His love.

Bright and glorious is that revelation

Written all over this great world of ours;

Making evident our own creation,

In these stars of earth—these golden flowers.

And the poet, faithful and far-seeing,

Sees, alike in stars and flowers, a part

Of the self-same universal being,

Which is throbbing in his brain and heart.

Gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining,
Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day,

Tremulous leaves, with soft and silver lining,
Buds that open only to decay ;

Brilliant hopes, all woven in gorgeous tissues,
Flaunting gaily in the golden light;

Large desires, with most uncertain issues;
Tender wishes, blossoming at night!

Wk

Floral Poetry.

11

These in flowers and men are more than seeming ;
Workings are they of the self-same powers,

Which the poet, in no idle dreaming,

Seeth in himself and in the flowers.

Everywhere about us are they glowing,

Some like stars, to tell us Spring is born ;

Others, their blue eyes with tears o’erflowing,

Stand like Ruth amid the golden corn ;

Not alone in Spring’s armorial bearing,

And in Summer’s green emblazoned field,

But in the arms of brave old Autumn’s wearing,

In the centre of his brazen shield :

Not alone in meadows and green alleys,

On the mountain-top, and by the brink

Of sequestered pools in woodland valleys,

Where the slaves of Nature stoop to drink ;

Not alone in her vast dome of glory,

Not on graves of bird and beast alone,

But on old cathedrals, high and hoary,

On the tombs of heroes, carved in stone ;

In the cottage of the rudest peasant,

In ancestral homes, whose crumbling towers,

Speaking of the Past unto the Present,

Tell us of the ancient games of Flowers ;

In all places, then, and in all seasons,

Flowers expand their light and soul-like wings,

Teaching us, by most persuasive reasons,

How akin they are to human things.

And with child-like, credulous affection,

We behold their tender buds expand ;

Emblems of our own great resurrection,

Emblems of the bright and better land.

Longfellow .

12

Floral Poetry.

THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS.

V N Eastern lands they talk in flowers,

A And tell in a garland their loves and cares;

Each blossom that blooms in their garden bowers,
On its leaves a mystic language bears.

The Rose is a sign of joy and love,

Young blushing love in its earliest dawn;

And the mildness that suits the gentle dove,

From the Myrtle’s snowy flower is drawn.

Innocence shines in the Lily’s bell,

Pure as the heart in its native heaven :

Fame’s bright star and glory’s swell,

By the glossy leaf of the Bay are given.

The silent, soft, and humble heart

In the Violet’s hidden sweetness breathes ;

And the tender soul that cannot part,

A twine of evergreen fondly wreathes.

The Cypress that daily shades the grave,

Is sorrow that mourns her bitter lot;

And faith, that a thousand ills can brave,

Speaks in thy blue leaves, Forget-me-not.

Then gather a wreath from the garden bowers,
And tell the wish of thy heart in flowers.

Percival .

Floral Poetry.

HERE’S FLOWERS FOR YOU.

Perdita. . . . Here’s flowers for you :

Hot Lavender, Mints, Savory, Marjoram :

The Marigold, that goes to bed with the sun,

And with him rises weeping; these are flowers
Of middle summer, and, I think, they are given
To men of middle age : you are very welcome.

Camillo. I should leave grazing, were I of your flock,

And only live by gazing.

Perdita. Out, alas !

You’d be so lean, that blasts of January
Would blow you through and through.—Now, my fairest
friend,

I would I had some flowers o’ the Spring, that might
Become your time of day; and yours, and yours ;

That wear upon your virgin branches yet
Your maidenheads growing :—O, Proserpina,

For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou lett’st fall
From Dis’s waggon ! Daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty ; Violets, dim,

But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes,

Or Cytherea’s breath; pale Primroses,

That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady
Most incident to maids ; bold Oxlips, and
The Crown-imperial; Lilies of all kinds,

The Flower-de-luce being one ! Oh ! these I lack,

To make you garlands of; and, my sweet friend,

To strew him o’er and o’er.

Shakspere, “A Winter's Tale .”

14

Floral Poetry.

ARRANGEMENT OF A BOUQUET.

H ERE damask Roses, white and red,
Out of my lap first take I,

Which still shall run along the thread,
My chiefest flower this make I.

Amongst these Roses in a row,

Next place I Pinks in plenty,

These double Daisies then for show,
And will not this be dainty ?

The pretty Pansy then Ell tie

Like stones some chain inchasing ;
And next to them, their near ally,

The purple Violet placing.

The curious choice Clove July flower,
Whose kinds hight the Carnation,

For sweetness of most sovereign power,
Shall help my wreath to fashion ;

Whose sundry colours of one kind,

First from one root derived,

Them in their several suits I’ll bind :
My garland so contrived.

A course of Cowslips then I’ll stick
And here and there (though sparely)
The pleasant Primrose down I’ll prick,
Like pearls that will show rarely;

Floral Poetry.

Then with these Marigolds I’ll make
My garland somewhat swelling,

These Honeysuckles then I’ll take,

Whose sweets shall help their smelling.

The Lily and the flower-de-lis,

For colour much contending ;

For that I them do only prize,

They are but poor in scenting.

The Daffodil most dainty is

To match with these in meetness ;

The Columbine compared to this,

All much alike for sweetness.

These in their natures only are
Fit to emboss the border,

Therefore I’ll take especial care
To place them in their order :

Sweet-Williams, Campions, Sops-in-wine,
One by another neatly :

Thus have I made this wreath of mine,
And finished it featly.

Drayton.

i6

Floral Poetry.

THE VOICE OF THE FLOWERS.

B LOSSOMS that lowly bend,

Shutting your leaves from evening’s chilly dew ;
While your rich odours heavily ascend,

The flitting winds to woo.

I walk at silent eve,

When scarce a breath is in the garden bowers ;

And many a vision and wild fancy weave
’Midst you, ye lovely flowers.

Beneath the cool green boughs

And perfumed bells of the just-blossomed Lime,

That stoop and gently touch my feverish brow,

Fresh in their Summer prime ;

Or in the mossy dell,

Where the pale Primrose trembles at a breath ;

Or where the Lily, by the silent well,

Beholds her form beneath ;

Or where the rich Queen-Rose

Sits, throned and blushing, ’midst her leaves and moss
Or where the Wind-flower, pale and fragile, blows,

Or Violets banks emboss.

Here do I love to be—

Mine eyes alone in passionate love to dwell
Upon the loveliness and purity
Of every bud and bell.

Oh ! blessedness, to lie

By the clear brook, where the Long-Bennet dips !

To press the Rosebud in its purity
Unto the burning lips !

Floral Poetry.

To lay the weary head

Upon the bank with Daisies all beset;

Or with bare feet, at early dawn, to tread,

O’er mosses cool and wet !

And then, to sit at noon

When bees are humming low, and birds are still,

And drowsy is the faint uncertain tone
Of the swift woodland rill.

And dreams can then reveal

That, worldless though ye be, ye have a tone,

A language, and a power, that I may feel
Thrilling my spirit lone.

Ye speak of hope and love,

Bright as your hues, and vague as your perfume ;

Of changeful, fragile thoughts, that brightly move
Men’s hearts amid their gloom.

Ye speak of human life :

Its mystery—the beautiful and brief;

Its sudden fading, ’midst the tempest strife,

Even as a delicate leaf.

And more than all, ye speak

Of might and power, of mercy, of the One
Eternal, who hath strewed you fair and meet
To glisten in the sun :

To gladden all the earth

With bright and beauteous emblems of His grace,
That showers its gifts of uncomputed worth
In every clime and place.

Browne.

C

i8

Floral Poetry.

FLOWERS.

Y E valleys low, where the mild whispers rise

Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the Swart-star sparely looks ;

Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes,

That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers,

And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.

Bring the rathe* Primrose that forsaken dies,

The tufted Crow-toe, and pale Jessamine,

The white Pink, and the Pansy freaked with jet,

The glowing Violet,

The Musk Rose, and the well-attired Woodbine,

AVith Cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,

And every flower that sad embroidery wears ;

Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed,

And Daffodillies fill their cups with tears,

To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.

Milt on.

USE OF FLOWERS.

/TOD might have bade the earth bring forth
Enough for great and small,

The Oak tree and the Cedar tree,

AVithout a flower at all.

He might have made enough, enough
For every want of ours :

For luxury, medicine, and toil,

And yet have made no flowers.

* Early.

Floral Poetry.

*9

The ore within the mountain mine
Requireth none to grow,

Nor doth it need the Lotus flower
To make the river flow.

The clouds might give abundant rain,

The mighty dews might fall,

And the herb that keepeth life in man
Might yet have drunk them all.

Then wherefore, wherefore were they made
All dyed with rainbow light:

All fashioned with supremest grace,
Upspringing day and night.

Springing in valleys green and low,

And on the mountain high,

And in the silent wilderness,

Where no man passes by ?

Our outward life requires them not—

Then wherefore had they birth ?

To minister delight to man,

To beautify the earth;

To comfort man, to whisper hope
Whene’er his faith is dim ;

For Who so careth for the flowers,

Will much more care for him !

Mary Hoioitt.

20

Floral Poetry.

WILD FLOWERS.

Y STOOD tiptoe upon a little hill;

X The air was cooling, and so very still,

That the sweet buds which, with a modest pride
Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside,

Their scantydeaved, and finely tapering stems.

Had not yet lost their starry diadems,

Caught from the early sobbings of the morn.

The clouds were pure and white as flocks new shorn,
And fresh from the clear brook; sweetly they slept
On the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept
A little noiseless noise among the leaves,

Born of the very sigh that silence heaves ;

For not the faintest motion could be seen
Of all the shades that slanted o’er the green.

There was wide wandering for the greediest eye,

To peer about upon variety;

Far round the horizon’s crystal air to skim,

And trace the dwindled edgings of its brim ;

To picture out the quaint and curious bending
Of a fresh woodland alley never-ending :

Or by the bowery clefts, and leafy shelves,

Guess where the jaunty streams refresh themselves.

I gazed awhile, and felt as light and free
As though the fanning wings of Mercury
Had play’d upon my heels : I was light-hearted,

And many pleasures to my vision started ;

So I straightway began to pluck a posy
Of luxuries bright, milky, soft, and rosy.

A bush of May-flowers with the bees about them ;

Ah, sure no tasteful nook could be without them !

And let a lush Laburnum oversweep them,

And let long grass grow round the roots, to keep them

Floral Poetry.

21

Moist, cool, and green; and shade the Violets,

That they may bind the moss in leafy nets.

A Filbert hedge with Wildbrier overtwined,

And clumps of Woodbine taking the soft wind
Upon their Summer thrones ; there, too, should be
The frequent chequer of a youngling tree,

That with a score of light green brethren shoots
From the quaint mossiness of aged roots :

Round which is heard a spring-head of clear waters,
Babbling so wildly of its lovely daughters,

The spreading Bluebells : it may haply mourn
That such fair clusters should be rudely torn
From their fresh beds, and scatter’d thoughtlessly
By infant hands, left on the path to die.

Open afresh your round of starry folds,

Ye ardent Marigolds !

Dry up the moisture from your golden lids,

For great Apollo bids

That in these days your praises should be sung
On many harps, which he has lately strung;

And when again your dewiness he kisses,

Tell him, I have you in my world of blisses :

So, haply when I rove in some far vale,

His mighty voice may come upon the gale.

Here are Sweet Peas, on tiptoe for a flight:

With wings of gentle flush o’er delicate white,

And taper fingers catching at all things,

To bind them all about with tiny rings.

What next ? a turf of evening Primroses,

O’er which the mind may hover till it dozes ;

O’er which it well might take a pleasant sleep,

But that ’tis ever startled by the leap
Of buds into ripe flowers.

Keals.

22

Floral Poetry ,

SONGS OF THE FLOWERS.

SNOWDROP.

H URSLING of the new-born year,

Sporting with the tempest’s might,
Like the snowflake I appear,

Robed in winter’s vestal white.

CROCUS.

Forth from my bulbous dwelling
I leapt at the summons of Spring,
What herald of emperor’s telling
So gorgeous a tabard could bring ?

SWEET VIOLET.

Born on a sloping bank, ’neath an old hawthorn tree,

I shrank from the passing gaze, like a maiden, timidly,

Till the wooing winds of March came whispering such a tale,
That I op’d my balmy stores to enrich their healthful gale.

PRIMROSE.

Near to a prattling stream,

Or under the hedgerow trees,

I bask in the sun’s glad beam,

And list to the passing breeze.

When the village school is o’er,

And the happy children free,
Gladly they seek to explore

Haunts that are perfumed by me.

Floral Poetry.

2 3

HEATH.

When the wild bee comes with a murmuring song,
Pilfering sweets as he roams along,

I uprear my purple bell :

Listening the freeborn eagle’s cry,

Marking the heath-cock’s glancing eye,

On the mountain side I dwell.

The echoes yet the notes prolong,

When one, who oft o’er hill and dell
Had sought the spots where flowerets dwell,
And knew their names and functions well,

And could of all their changes tell,

Thus answered to their song :

“ Loveliest children of earth,

Of more than each rainbow hue,

Of beauty coeval with birth,

And fragrance found only in you !

“ O ! that like you I could live,

Free from all malice and strife,

That each thought and each pulse I could give
To the beautiful Giver of Life.

“ Until earth shall wax old and decay,

You shall ever triumphantly shine,

And on leaf and on petal display
The work of an Artist Divine.”

Robert Patterson.

24

Floral Poetry.

A WILD FLOWER.

YAOWN the shadowed lane she goes,
U And her arms are laden
With the Woodbine and Wild Rose—
Happy little maiden !

Sweetly, sweetly doth she sing
As the lark above her :

Surely every living thing

That has seen must love her.

As she strayed and as she sung,

Happy little maiden !

Shadowy lanes and dells among,

With wild flowers laden,

Chanced a bonny youth that way,

For the lanes were shady :

She dropped one wee flower, they say,
Did this little lady.

Dropped a flower, so they say;

Dropped, and never missed it;

And the youth, alack-a-day !

Picked it up and kissed it.

Now in sweet lane wanderings,

With love flowers laden,

With her love she strays and sings,
Happy little maiden !

Floral Poetry.

EMBLEMS OF FLOWERS.

A DOWN winding Nith I did wander

To mark the sweet flowers as they spring !
Adown winding Nith I did wander,

Of Phillis to muse and to sing.

The Daisy amused my fond fancy,

So artless, so simple, so wild ;

Thou emblem, said I, o’ my Phillis,

For she is simplicity’s child.

The Rosebud’s the blush o’ my charmer,

Her sweet balmy lip when ’tis prest :

How fair and how pure is the Lily,

But fairer and purer her breast.

Yon knot of gay flowers in the arbour,

They ne’er wi’ my Phillis can vie :

Her breath is the breath of the Woodbine,

Its dew-drop o’ diamond her eye.

Her voice is the song of the morning,

That wakes through the green-spreading grove,
When Phoebus peeps over the mountains,

On music, and pleasure, and love.

But beauty how frail and how fleeting,

The bloom of a fine summer’s day !

While worth in the mind o’ my Phillis
Will flourish without a decay.

Burns.

D

ff

Floral Poetry.

WILD FLOWERS.

Y DREAMED that, as I wandered by the way,

A Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,

And gentle odours led my steps astray,

Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,

But kissed it and then fled, as thou might’st in a dream.

There grew pied Wind-flowers and Violets,

Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,

The constellated flower that never sets ;

Faint Oxlips ; tender Bluebells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved ; and that tall flower that wets
Its mother’s face with heaven-collected tears,

When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears.

And in the warm hedge grew lush Eglantine,

Green Cowbind and the moonlight-coloured May,

And Cherry blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
Was the bright dew yet drained not by the day;

And Wild Roses, and Ivy serpentine,

With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray,

And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold,

Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.

And nearer to the river’s trembling edge,

There grew broad Flag-flowers, purple prankt with white,
And starry River-buds among the sedge,

And floating Water Lilies, broad and bright,

&

Floral Poetry.

Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge

With moonlight beams of their own watery light;
And bulrushes and reeds of such deep green
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.

Methought that of these visionary flowers
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues which in their natural bowers
Were mingled or opposed, the like array
Kept these imprisoned children of the hours
Within my hand,—and then, elate and gay,

I hastened to the spot whence I had come,

That I might there present it !—Oh ! to whom ?

Shelley.

DECISION OF THE FLOWER.

A ND with scarlet Poppies, around like a bower,
The maiden found her mystic flower.

“ Now, gentle flower, I pray thee, tell
If my lover loves me, and loves me well :

So may the fall of the morning dew
Keep the sun from fading thy tender blue.

Now I number the leaves for my lot—

He loves not—he loves me—he loves me not—
He loves me—yes, thou last leaf, yes—

I’ll pluck thee not for the last sweet guess !

He loves me ! ”—“ Yes,” a dear voice sighed,

And her lover stands by Margaret’s side.

L. E. Landon.

28

Floral Poetry.

“GO TO THE FOREST SHADE.”

,0 to the forest shade—

Seek thou the well-known glade,
Where, heavy with sweet dew, the Violets lie,
Gleaming through moss-tufts deep,

Like dark eyes filled with sleep,

And bathed in hues of summer’s midnight sky.

Bring me their buds, to shed
Around my dying bed

A breath of May, and of the wood’s repose;

For I in sooth depart
With a reluctant heart,

That fain would linger where the bright sun glows.

Fain would I stay with thee—

Alas ! this may not be ;

Yet bring me still the gifts of happier hours !

Go where the fountain’s breast
Catches, in glassy rest,

The dim green light that pours through Laurel bowers.

I know how softly bright,

Steeped in that tender light,

The Water-lilies tremble there e’en now ;

Go to the pure stream’s edge,

And from its whispering sedge
Bring me those flowers to cool my fevered brow !

Then, as in Hope’s young days,

Track thou the antique maze
Of the rich garden to its grassy mound ;
There is a lone White Rose,

Shedding, in sudden snows,

Its faint leaves o’er the emerald turf around.

Floral Poetry.

29

Well know’st thou that fair tree—

A murmur of the bee
Dwells ever in the honied lime above ;

Bring me one pearly flower
Of all its clustering shower —

For on that spot we first revealed our love.

Gather one Woodbine bough,

Then, from the lattice low
Of the bowered cottage which I bade thee mark,
When by the hamlet last,

Through dim wooddanes we passed,

While dews were glancing to the glow-worm’s spark.

Haste ! to my pillow bear
Those fragrant things and fair,

Thy hand no more may bind them up at eve —

Yet shall their odour soft
One bright dream round me waft
Of life, youth, summer—all that I must leave !

And, oh ! if thou would’st ask
Wherefore thy steps I task,

The grove, the stream, the hamlet vale to trace,

’Tis that some thought of me,

When I am gone, may be
The spirit bound to each familiar place.

I bid mine image dwell

(Oh ! break not thou the spell)

In the deep wood and by the fountain side ;

Thou must not, my beloved !

Rove where we two have roved,

Forgetting her that in her spring-time died !

Mrs. Haitians.

3 ° Floral Poetry.

WILD FLOWERS.

B EAUTIFUL children of the woods and fields !

That bloom by mountain streamlets ’mid the heather,
Or into clusters ’neath the hazels gather—

Or where by hoary rocks you make your bields,

And sweetly flourish on through Summer weather—

I love ye all !

Beautiful flowers ! to me ye fresher seem
From the Almighty Hand that fashioned all,

Than those that flourish by a garden-wall;

And I can image you, as in a dream,

Fair, modest maidens, nursed in hamlets small—

I love ye all !

Beautiful gems ! that on the brow of earth
Are fixed as in a queenly diadem :

Though lowly ye, and most without a name,

Young hearts rejoice to see your buds come forth,

As light erewhile into the world came—

I love ye all !

Beautiful things ye are, where’er ye grow !

The wild Red Rose—-the Speedwell’s peeping eyes—

Our own Bluebell — the Daisy, that doth rise
Wherever sunbeams fall or winds do blow ;

And thousands more, of blessed forms and dyes—

I love ye all !

Floral Poetry.

Beautiful nurslings of the early dew,

Fanned in your loveliness by every breeze,

And shaded o’er by green and arching trees :

I often wished that I were one of you,

Dwelling afar upon the grassy leas—

I love ye all !

Beautiful children of the glen and dell —

The dingle deep—the moorland stretching wide,

And of the mossy fountain’s sedgy side !

Ye o’er my heart have thrown a lovesome spell;

And though the worldling, scorning, may deride—

I love ye all !

Robert Nicoll.

SONNET.

S WEET is the Rose, but growes upon a brere ;

Sweet is the Juniper, but sharpe his bough;
Sweet is the Eglantine, but pricketh nere ;

Sweet is the Firbloom, but his branches rough;
Sweet is the Cypress, but his rind is tough ;

Sweet is the Nut, but bitter is his pill;

Sweet is the Broome-flowere, but yet sowre enough ;
And sweet is Moly, but his roote is ill.

So every sweet with sowre is tempred still,

That maketh it be coveted the more :

For easie things that may be got at will,

.Most sorts of men doe set but little store.

Why then should I account of little pain,

That endless pleasure shall unto me game ?

Spenser.

3 2

Floral Poetry.

CHILDREN OF THE SUN’S FIRST GLANCING.

C HILDREN of the sun’s first glancing,
Flowers that deck the bounteous earth ;
Joy and mirth are round ye dancing,

Nature smiled upon your birth ;

Light hath veined your petals tender,

And with hues of matchless splendour
Flora paints each dewy bell;

But lament, ye sweet spring blossoms,

Soul hath never thrilled your bosoms,

All in cheerless night ye dwell.

Nightingale and lark are singing
Many a lay of love to you ;

In your chaliced blossoms swinging,

Tiny sylphs their sylphids woo ;

Deep within the painted bower
Of a soft and perfumed flower,

Venus once did fall asleep ;

But no pulse of passion darted
Through your breast, by her imparted—
Children of the morning, weep.

When my mother’s harsh rejection
Bids me cease my love to speak—
Pledges of a true affection,

When your gentle aid I seek—

Then by every voiceless token
Hope, and faith unchanged, are spoken,

And by you my bosom grieves ;

Love himself among you stealeth,

And his awful form concealeth,

Shut within your folding leaves.

From Schiller.

Floral Poetry .

33

THE FLOWER-DIAL.

T WAS a lovely thought to mark the hours,

As they floated in light away,

By the opening and the folding flowers,

That laugh to the Summer’s day.

Thus had each moment its own rich hue,

And its graceful cup and bell,

In whose coloured vase might sleep the dew,

Like a pearl in an ocean shell.

To such sweet signs might the time have flowed
In a golden current on,

Ere from the garden, man’s first abode,

The glorious guests were gone.

So might the days have been brightly told—
Those days of song and dreams—

When shepherds gathered their flocks of old,

By the blue Arcadian streams.

So in those isles of delight, that rest
Far off in a breezeless main,

Which many a bark, with a weary quest,

Has sought, but still in vain.

Yet is not life, in its real flight,

Marked thus—even thus—-on earth,

By the closing of one hope’s delight,

And another’s gentle birth ?

Oh ! let us live, so that flower by flower.

Shutting in turn, may leave
A lingerer still for the sunset hour,

A charm for the shaded eve.

Mrs. Hemans.

E

34

Floral Poetry.

THE WREATH.

TO A FRIEND ON HER BIRTHDAY.

Y ET others sing the rich, the great,

Lr The victor’s palm, the monarch’s state,
A purer joy be mine —

To greet the excellent of earth,

To call down blessings on thy worth,

And, for the hour that gave thee birth,
Life’s choicest flowers entwine.

And lo ! where smiling from above
(Meet helpmate in the work of love)

O’er opening hill and lawn,

With flowerets of a thousand dyes,

With all that’s sweet of earth and skies,
Soft breathes the vernal dawn.

Come ! from her stores we’ll cull the best
Thy bosom to adorn ;

Each leaf in livelier verdure drest,

Each blossom balmier than the rest,

Each rose without a thorn ;

Fleet tints, that with the rainbow died,
Brief flowers, that withered in their pride,
Shall, blushing into light, awake
And kindlier bloom, for thy dear sake.

And first—though oft, alas ! condemned
Like merit, to the shade—

The Primrose meek, with dews begemmed,
Shall sparkle in the braid ;

ft

Floral Poetry.

35

And there, as sisters, side by side
(Genius with modesty allied),

The Pink’s bright red, the Violet’s blue,

In blended rays, shall greet our view,

Each lovelier for the other’s hue.

How soft yon Jasmine’s sunlit glow,

How chaste yon Lily’s robe of snow,

With Myrtle green inwove,

Types, dearest, of thyself and me—

Of thy mild grace and purity,

And my unchanging love,

Of grace and purity, like thine,

And love, undying love, like mine.

In fancifully plumed array,

As ever cloud at set of day,

All azure, vermil, silver-grey,

And showering thick perfume.

See how the Lilac’s clustered spray
Has kindled into bloom,

Radiant as Joy, o’er troubles past,

And whispering, “ Spring is come at last! ”

Blest Llowers ! There breathes not one unfraught
With lessons sweet and new ;

The Rose, in Taste’s own garden wrought;

The Pansy, nurse of tender thought;

The Wallflower, tried and true ;

The purple Heath, so lone and fair;

(O how unlike the world’s vain glare !)

%

Floral Poetry.

The Daisy, so contently gay,

Opening her eyelids with the day ;

The Gorse-bloora, never sad or sere,

But golden bright,

As gems of night,

And fresh and fragrant all the year ;

Each leaf, each bud of classic lore,

Oak, Hyacinth, and Floramore;

The Cowslip, graceful in her woe;

The Hawthorn’s smile, the Poppy’s glow,

This ripe with balm for present sorrow,

And that with raptures for to-morrow.

The flowers are culled; and each lithe stem
With Woodbine band we braid—

With Woodbine, type of Life’s best gem,

Of truth that will not fade.

The wreath is wove; do Thou, blest Power,
That brood’st o’er leaflet, fruit, and flower,
Embalm it with Thy love ;

Oh ! make it such as angels wear,

Pure, bright, as decked earth’s first-born pair,
Whilst free in Eden’s grove,

From herb and plant they brushed the dew,
And neither sin nor sorrow knew.

William Peters.

Floral Poetry.

37

LOVE’S WREATH.

10JHEN Love was a child, and went idling round
" ^ ’Mong flowers, the whole summer’s day,

One morn in the valley a bower he found,

So sweet, it allured him to stay.

O’erhead from the trees hung a garland fair,

A fountain ran darkly beneath ;

Twas Pleasure that hung up the flow’rets there ;
Love knew it and jumped at the wreath.

But Love didn’t know—and at his weak years,

What urchin was likely to know?—

That sorrow had made of her own salt tears,

The fountain which murmured below.

He caught at the wreath-—but with too much haste,
As boys when impatient will do—

It fell in those waters of briny taste,

And the flowers were all wet through.

Yet this is the wreath he wears night and day;

And, though it all sunny appears
With Pleasure’s own lustre, each leaf, they say,

Still tastes of the fountain of tears.

Aloore.

33

Floral Poetry.

BRING FLOWERS.

B RING flowers, young lowers, for the festal board,

To wreathe the cup ere the wine is poured ;

Bring flowers ! they are springing in wood and vale,

Their breath floats out on the southern gale,

And the touch of the sunbeam hath waked the Rose,

To deck the hall where the bright wind flows.

Bring flowers to strew in the conqueror’s path—

He hath shaken thrones with his stormy-wrath !

He comes with the spoils of nations back,

The vines he crushed in his chariot’s track,

The turf looks red where he won the day—

Bring flowers to die in the conqueror’s way !

Bring flowers to the captive’s lonely cell,

They have tales of the joyous woods to tell;

Of the free blue streams, and the glowing sky,

And the bright world shut from his languid eye ;

They will bear him a thought of the sunny hours,

And a dream of his youth—bring him flowers, wild flowers

Bring flowers, fresh flowers, for the bride to wear !

They were worn to blush in her shining hair;

She is leaving the home of her childhood’s mirth,

She hath bid farewell to her father’s hearth ;

Her place is now by another’s side—

Bring flowers for the locks of the fair young bride.

Floral Poetry.

39

Bring flowers, pale flowers, o’er the bier to shed,

A crown for the brow of the early dead !

For this through its leaves hath the Wild Rose burst,
For this in the woods was the Violet nursed !

Though they smile in vain for what once was ours,

1 hey are Love s last gift — bring ye flowers, pale flowers !

Bring flowers to the shrine where we kneel in prayer,
They are Nature’s offering, their place is there!

They speak of hope to the fainting heart,

With a voice of promise they come and part,

1 hey sleep in dust in the wintry hours,

fl hey break forth in glory — bring flowers, bright flowers !

FRAGMENT.

(TOME clothe the soil that feeds them, far diffused
And lowly creeping, modest and yet fair,

Like Virtue, thriving most where little seen ;

Some, more aspiring, catch the neighbour shrub
With clasping tendrils, and invest his branch,

Else unadorned, with many a gay festoon

And fragrant chaplet, recompensing well

Ihe strength they borrow with the grace they lend.

Cowper.

40

Floral Poetry.

DAWN, GENTLE FLOWER.

YA AWN, gentle flower.

From the morning earth !
We will gaze and wonder
At thy wondrous birth !

Bloom, gentle flower !

Lover of the night,

Sought by wind and shower,
Fondled by the night !

Fade, gentle flower !

All thy white leaves close ;
Having shone thy beauty,
Time ’tis for repose.

Die, gentle flower,

In the silent sun !

So—all pangs are over,

All thy tasks are done !

Day hath no more glory,
Though he soars so high ;
Thine is all man’s story—
Live—and love—and die !

Barry Cornwall.

Floral Poetry.

HYMN TO THE FLOWERS.

D AY-STARS ! that ope your eyes with man, to twinkle
From rainbow galaxies of earth’s creation,

And dew-drops on her holy altars sprinkle
As a libation.

Ye matin worshippers ! who, bending lowly
Before the uprisen sun, God’s lidless eye !

Throw from your chalices a sweet and holy
Incense on high.

Ye bright Mosaics ! that with storied beauty
The floor of Nature’s temple tesselate
With numerous emblems of instructive duty
Your forms create.

’Neath cloistered boughs, each floral bell that swingeth,
And tolls its perfume on the passing air,

Makes Sabbath in the fields, -and ever ringeth
A call to prayer.

Not to the domes where crumbling arch and column
Attest the feebleness of mortal hand,

But to that fane, most catholic and solemn,

Which God hath planned.

To that cathedral, boundless as our wonder,

Whose quenchless lamps the sun and moon supply;

Its choir the winds and waves—its organ thunder—

Its dome the sky.

Floral Poetry.

There, as in solitude and shade I wander,

Through the green aisles, or stretched upon the sod,

Awed by the silence, reverently ponder
The ways of God.

Your voiceless lips, O flowers ! are living preachers,
Each cup a pulpit, and each leaf a book,

Supplying to my fancy numerous teachers
From loneliest nook.

Floral apostles ! that in dewy splendour,

“ Weep without woe, and blush without a crime,”

O may I deeply learn, and ne’er surrender
Your lore sublime !

“Thou wert not, Solomon, in all thy glory,

Arrayed,” the lilies cry, “ in robes like ours ;

How vain your grandeur ! ah, how transitory
Are human flowers ! ”

In the sweet-scented pictures, heavenly Artist !

With which thou paintest Nature’s widespread hall,

What a delightful lesson thou impartest
Of love to all !

Not useless are ye, flowers, though made for pleasure,
Blooming o’er field and wave by day and night,

From every source your sanction bids me treasure
Harmless delight.

Ephemeral sages ! what instructors hoary

For such a world of thought could furnish scope?

Each fading calyx a memento mori,

Yet fount of hope.

Floral Poetry.

&

Posthumous glories ! angel-like eollection !

Upraised from seed or bulb interred in earth,
Ye are to me a type of resurrection,

A second birth.

43

Were I, O God, in churchless lands remaining,
Far from all voice of teachers or divines,

My soul would find, in flowers of thy ordaining,
Priests, sermons, shrines !

Horace Smith.

THE SHEPHERD TO THE FLOWERS.

S WEET Violets, Love’s paradise, that spread

Your gracious odours, which you, couched, bear
Within your paly faces,

Upon the gentle wing of some calm-breathing wind,
That plays amidst the plain !

If, by the favour of propitious stars, you gain
Such grace as in my lady’s bosom place to find,

Be proud to touch those places :

And when her warmth your moisture forth doth wear,
Whereby her dainty parts are sweetly fed,

You, honours of the flowery meads, I pray,

You pretty daughters of the earth and sun,

With mild and seemly breathing straight display
My bitter sighs, that have my heart undone !

Sir Walter Raleigh.

44

Floral Poetry.

•jf

BLESSED BE GOD FOR FLOWERS.

B LESSED be God for flowers ;

For the bright, gentle, holy thoughts that breathe
From out their odorous beauty, like a wreath
Of sunshine on life’s hours.

Ay, prize them well, my child—

The bright young blooming things that never die—
Pointing our hopes to happier worlds that lie
Far o’er this earthly wild ;

Prize them, that when forgot
By all, their old familiar tints shall bring
Sweet thoughts of her, whose dirge the deep winds sing.
And whose love earth holds not;

Prize them, that through all hours
Thou hold’st sweet commune with their beauty here ;
And, rich in this, through many a future year,

Bless thou our God for flowers !

Mrs. Tinsley.

THE BROKEN FLOWER.

O H ! wear it on thy heart, my love,
Still, still a little while ;

Sweetness is lingering in its leaves,
Though faded be their smile.

Yet for the sake of what hath been,
Oh ! cast it not away;

’Twas born to grace a summer scene,
A long, bright, golden day,

My love,

A long, bright, golden day !

Floral Poetry.

45

A little while around thee, love,

Its fragrance yet shall cling,

Telling that on thy heart hath lain
A fair though faded thing.

But not even that warm heart hath power
To win it back from fate :—

Oh ! I am like thy broken flower,

Cherished too late, too late,

My love,

Cherished, alas ! too late.

Mrs. Hemans.

TO BLOSSOMS.

F AIR pledges of a fruitful tree,

Why do ye fall so fast ?

Your date is not so past,

But you may stay here yet awhile,

To blush and gently smile,

And go at last.

What! were ye born to be
An hour or half’s delight,

And so to bid good-night ?

’Twas pity Nature brought ye forth
Merely to show your worth,

And lose you quite.

But ye are lovely leaves, where we
May read how soon things have
Their end, though ne’er so brave ;

And after they have shown their pride,

Like you, awhile, they glide
Into the grave.

4

Herrick.

46

Floral Poetry.

FADED FLOWERS.

YAADED flowers,

^ Sweet faded flowers,

Beauty and death
Have ruled your hours,

Ye woke in bloom but a morn ago,

And now are your blossoms in dust laid low.

But yesterday,

With the breeze ye strove—

In the play of life,

In the pride of love;

To and fro swung each radiant head,

That now is drooping, and pale, and dead !

Delicate flower,

With the pearl-white bells,

No more shall dew-drop
Sleep in thy cells !

No more, rich Rose, on thy heaving breast,
The honey-bee fold his wings to rest!

Fair myrtle tree,

Thy blossoms lie low,

But green above them
The branches grow;

Like a buried love, or a vanished joy,

Linked unto memories none destroy.

Floral Poetry.

47

Faded flowers,

Sweet faded flowers !—

Fair frail records
Of Eden’s bowers ;

In a world where sorrow and wrong bear sway,
Why should ye linger ?—Away ! away !

What were the emblems
Pride to stain,

Might ye your glorious
Crowns retain ?

And what for the young heart, bowed with grief,
Were the Rose ne’er seen with a withered leaf!

Ye bloom to tell us
What once hath been;

What yet shall in heaven
Again be seen ;

Ye die, that man in his strength may learn
How vain the hopes in his heart that burn.

Many in form,

And bright in hue !

I know your fate—

But the earth to strew—

And my soul flies on to immortal bowers,

Where the heart and the Rose are not faded flowers.

Miss Jeivsbury.

4 8

Floral Poetry.

p-

$

TRANSPLANTED FLOWERS.,

Y E living gems of cold and fragrant fire !

Die ye for ever, when ye die, ye flowers ?

Take ye, when in your beauty ye expire,

An everlasting farewell of your bowers?

No more to listen for the wooing air,

And song-brought morn, the cloud-tinged woodlands
o’er !

No more to June’s soft lip your breasts to bare,

And drink fond evening’s dewy breath no more !

Soon fades the sweetest, first the fairest dies,

For frail and fair are sisters ; but the heart,

Filled with deep love, Death’s power to kill denies,

And sobs e’en o’er the dead, “We cannot part!”

Have I not seen thee, Wild Rose, in my dreams?

Like a pure spirit—beauteous as the skies,

When the clear blue is brightest, and the streams
Dance down the hills, reflecting the rich dyes
Of morning clouds, and cistus woodbine-twined—

Didst thou not wake me from a dream of death ?

Yea, and thy voice- was sweeter than the wind
When it inhales the love-sick Violet’s breath,

Bending it down with kisses, where the bee
Hums over golden gorse, and sunny broom.

Soul of the Rose ! what said’st thou then to me ?

“ We meet,” thou said’st, “ though severed by the tomb :
Lo, brother, this is heav’n ! and thus the just shall

«■

bloom.”

E. Elliott.

Floral Poetry.

49

FLOWERS FOR THE HEART.

YALOWERS ! winter flowers !—the child is dead,

t r

k‘ The mother cannot speak;
Oh, softly couch his little head,
Or Marv’s heart will break !

Amid those curls of flaxen hair
This pale pink riband twine,
And on the little bosom there
Place this wan lock of mine.

How like a form in cold white stone,

The coffined infant lies!

Look, mother, on thy little one,

And tears will fill thine eyes.

She cannot weep, more faint she grows,

More deadly pale and still;

Flowers ! oh, a flower ! a Winter Rose,

That tiny hand to fill.

Go, search the fields ! the lichen wet
Bends o’er th’ unfailing well;

Beneath the furrow lingers yet
The scarlet Pimpernel.

Peeps not a Snowdrop in the bower,

Where never froze the spring?

A Daisy? ah! bring childhood’s flower!

The half-blown Daisy bring !

Yes, lay the Daisy’s little head
Beside the little cheek;

Oh, haste ! the last of five is dead!

The childless cannot speak !

E. Elliott.

G

5 °

Floral Poetry.

THE DYING GIRL AND FLOWERS.

B EAR them not from grassy dells,
Where wild bees have honey-cells ;
Not from where sweet water-sounds
Thrill the greenwood to its bounds;

Not to waste their scented breath
On the silent room of Death !

Kindred to the breeze they are,

And the glow-worm’s emerald star;

And the bird, whose song is free,

And the many-whispering tree :

Oh! too deep a love, and fain,

They would win to earth again.

Spread them not before the eyes
Closing fast on summer skies !

Woo thou not the spirit back
From its lone and viewless track,

With the bright things which have birth
Wide o’er all the coloured earth !

With the Violet’s breath would rise

Thoughts too sad for her who dies;

From the Lily’s pearl-cup shed,

Dreams too sweet would haunt her bed;

Dreams of youth—of spring-time eves—

«

Music—beauty—all she leaves !

Floral Poetry.

5i

Hush ! ’tis thou that dreaming art,
Calmer is her gentle heart.

Yes ! o’er fountain, vale, and grove,
Leaf and flower, hath gushed her love;
But that passion, deep and true,

Knows not of a last adieu.

Types of lovelier forms than. these,

In their fragile mould she sees;
Shadows* of yet richer things,

Born beside immortal springs,

Into fuller glory wrought,

Kindled by surpassing thought.

Therefore in the Lily’s leaf
She can read no word of grief;

O’er the Woodbine she can dwell,
Murmuring not—Farewell ! farewell !
And her dim, yet speaking eye,

Greets the Violet solemnly.

Therefore, once, and yet again,

Strew them o’er her bed of pain ;

From her chamber take the gloom,
With a light and flush of bloom :

So should one depart, who goes
Where no death can touch the Rose.

Anonymous.

5 2

Floral Poetry.

FLOWERS:

SENT THE WRITER DURING ILLNESS.

Y LOVED you ever, gentle flowers,

A And made you playmates of my youth ;

The while your spirit stole
In secret to my soul,

To shed a softness through my ripening powers,

And lead the thoughtful mind to deepest truth.

And now, when weariness and pain
Had cast you almost from my breast,

With each a smiling face,

In all your simple grace,

You come once more to take me back again
From pain to ease, from weariness to rest.

Kind visitants ! through my sick-room
You seem to breathe an air of health,

And with you looks of joy
To wake again the boy,

And to the pallid cheek restore its bloom,

And o’er the desert mind pour boundless wealth.

And whence ye came, by brimming stream,

’Neath rustling leaves, with birds within,

Again I. musing tread—

Forgot my restless bed,

And long sick hours—Too short the blessed dream
I woke to pain !—to hear the city’s din !

k--—--

Floral Poetry.

53

But time nor pain shall ever steal
Or youth or beauty from my mind ;

And blessings on ye, flowers,

Though few with me your hours,

The youth and beauty and the heart to feel,

In her who sent you, ye will leave behind !

Richard II. Dana.

SPRING FLOWERS.

W ELCOME, little Buttercups ;

Oh, the pretty flowers !
Coming ere the spring-time,

To tell of sunny hours.

While the trees are leafless,

While the fields are bare,
Golden, glossy Buttercups
Spring up here and there.

Welcome, little Buttercups,
Welcome, Daisies white,

Ye are in my spirit,

Yisioned a delight.

Coming ere the spring-time,

Of sunny hours to tell,
Speaking to our hearts of Him
Who doeth all things well.

Agnes Strickland.

54

Floral Poetry.

DREAMS AND FLOWERS WILL FADE.

Y KNOW where the winged visions dwell

^ That around the night-bed play;

I know each herb and floweret’s bell,

Where they hide their wings by day.

Then hasten we, maid,

To twine our braid,

To-morrow the dreams and flowers, will fade.

The image of love, that nightly flies
To visit the bashful maid,

Steals from the Jasmine-flower, that sighs
Its soul, like her, in the shade.

The dream of a future, happier hour
That alights on misery’s brow,.

Springs out of the silvery Almond-flower,
That blooms on a leafless bough.

Then hasten we, maid,

To twine our braid,

To-morrow the dreams and flowers will lade.

The visions, that oft to worldly eyes
The glitter of mines unfold,

Inhabit the mountain-herb, that dyes
The tooth of the fawn like gold.

The phantom shapes—oh, touch not them—
That appal the murderer’s sight,

Lurk in the fleshly mandrake’s stem,

That shrieks, when torn at night!

Then hasten we, maid,

To twine our braid,

To-morrow the dreams and flowers will fade.

T3TJ

Floral Poetry.

55

The dream of the injured, patient mind,

That smiles at the wrongs of men,

Is found in the bruised and wounded rind
Of the Cinnamon, sweetest then !

Then hasten we, maid,

To twine our braid,

To-morrow the dreams and flowers will fade.

Moore.

THE LOVE OF FLOWERS.

F LOWERS ! flowers ! bright, merry-faced flowers ;
I bless ye in joyous or saddened hours :

I love ye dearly,

Ye look so cheerly.

In Summer, Autumn, Winter or Spring,

A flower is to me the loveliest thing
That hath its birth
On this chequered earth :—

Oh ! who will not chorus the lay I sing!

Flowers! flowers! who loveth them not ?

Who hath his childhood’s sports forgot?

When Daisies white,
And King-cups bright,

And Snowdrops, Cowslips, and Daffodils,
Lured us to meadows and woods and rills;

And we wandered on,
Till a wreath was won

Of the heather-bells crowning the far-off hills.

L. A. Tramley.

5 6

Floral Poetry.

THE GARLAND.

T HE pride of every grove I chose,

The Violet sweet, the Lily fair,

The dappled Pink and blushing Rose,

To deck my charming Chloe’s hair.

At morn the nymph vouchsafed to place
Upon her brow the various wreath ;

The flowers less blooming than her face,
The scent less fragrant than her breath.

The flowers she wore along the day,

And every nymph and shepherd said,
That in her hair they looked more gay
Than glowing in their native bed.

Undressed at evening, when she found
Their odours lost, their colours past;

She changed her look, and on the ground
Her garland and her eyes she cast.

That eye dropped sense distinct and clear,
As any Muse’s tongue could speak,

When from its lid a pearly tear

Ran trickling down her beauteous cheek.

Dissembling what I knew too well,

My love, my life, said I, explain
This change of humour : pr’ythee tell:

That falling tear—what does it mean?

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Floral Poetry.

57

She sighed : she smiled : and to the flowers
Pointing, the lovely moralist said—

See, friend, in some few fleeting hours,

See yonder, what a change is made.

Ah me ! the blooming pride of May,

And that of beauty, are but one :

At morn both flourish bright and gay;

Both fade at evening, pale and gone.

At dawn poor Stella danced and sung,

The amorous youth around her bowed;

At night her fatal knell was rung ;

I saw, and kissed her in her shroud.

Such as she is, who died to-day,

Such I, alas ! may be to-morrow;

Go, Damon, bid the Muse display
The justice of thy Chloe’s sorrow.

Prior.

SAINT VALENTINE AND SPRING FLOWERS.

S AINT VALENTINE kindles the Crocus,
Saint Valentine wakens the birds ;

I would that his power could wake us
In tender and musical words!

So, fairest and sweetest, your pardon
(If no better welcome) I pray!—

There’s spring-time in grove and in garden;
Perchance it may breathe in my lay.

H

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Floral Poetry.

I think and I dream (did you know it?)

Of somebody’s eyes, her soft hair,

The neck bending whitely below it,

The dress that she chances to wear.

Each tone of her voice I remember,

Each turn of her head, of her arm ;
Methinks, had she faults out of number,
Being hers, they were certain to charm.

So friendly her face that I tremble,

On friendship so sweet having ruth ;

But why should I longer dissemble?

Or will you not guess at the truth?

And that is, dear maiden, I love you !

The sweetest, the brightest, the best!
Happy the roof-tree above you,

The floor where your footstep is prest!

May some new deliciousness meet you
On every new day of the Spring;

Each flower, in its turn, bloom to greet you,
Lark, mavis, and nightingale sing.

May kind vernal powers in your bosom
Their tenderest influence shed !

May I, when the Rose is in blossom,
Enweave you a crown, white and red.

IV. Allinpham.

Floral Poetry.

59

THE WINTER NOSEGAY.

\ OKHAT Nature, alas ! has denied
* ^ To the delicate growth of our isle,

Art has in a measure supplied,

And Winter is decked with a smile.

See, Mary, what beauties I bring

From the shelter of that sunny shed,

Where the flowers have the charms of the Spring,
Though abroad they are frozen and dead.

’Tis a bower of Arcadian sweets,

Where Flora is still in her prime,

A fortress to which she retreats

From the cruel assaults of the clime.

While earth wears a mantle of snow,

These pinks are as fresh and as gay
As the fairest and sweetest that blow
On the beautiful bosom of May.

See how they have safely survived
The powers of a sky so severe;

Such Mary’s true love, that has lived
Through many a turbulent year.

The charms of the late-blowing Rose
Seem graced with a livelier hue,

And the winter of sorrow best shows
The truth of a friend such as you.

Cozvper.

6o

Floral Poetry.

FIELD FLOWERS OL SUMMER.

Y E field flowers ! the gardens eclipse you, ’tis true,
Yet, wildlings of nature, I dote upon you,

For ye waft me to summers of old,

When the earth teemed around me with fairy delight,
And when Daisies and Buttercups gladdened my sight,
Like treasures of silver and gold.

I love thee for lulling me back into dreams
Of the blue Highland mountains and echoing streams,
And of birchen glades breathing their balm,

While the deer was seen glancing in sunshine remote,
And the deep mellow crush of the wood-pigeon’s note
Made music that sweetened the calm.

Not a pastoral song has a pleasanter tune

Than ye speak to my heart, little wildlings of June:

Of old ruinous castles ye tell,

Where I thought it delightful your beauties to find,
When the magic of nature first breathed on my mind,
And your blossoms were part of the spell.

Even now what affections the Violet awakes !

What loved little islands, twice seen in their lakes,

Can the wild Water-lily restore !

What landscapes I read in the Primrose’s looks,

And what pictures of pebbled and minnowy brooks,

In the Vetches that tangled their shore !

Floral Poetry.

\

Earth’s cultureless buds, to my heart ye were dear,

Ere the fever of passion, or ague of fear,

Had scathed my existence’s bloom;

Once I welcome you more, in life’s passionless stage,
With the visions of youth to revisit my age,

And I wish you to grow on my tomb.

Campbell.

SPRING FLOWERS.

V) OWING adorers of the gale,

Ye Cowslips delicately pale,

Upraise your loaded stems,

Unfold your cups in splendour; speak!
Who decked you with that ruddy streak,
And gilt your golden gems?

Violets, sweet tenants of the shade,

In purple’s richest pride arrayed,

Your errand here fulfil!

Go, bid the artist’s simple stain
Your lustre imitate, in vain,

And match your Maker’s skill.

Daisies, ye flowers of lowly birth,
Embroid’rers of the carpet earth,

That stud the velvet sod;

Open to Spring’s refreshing air,

In sweetest smiling bloom declare
Your Maker and my God.

John Clare.

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Floral Poetry.

if

LINES

SUGGESTED BY SOME LATE AUTUMN FLOWERS.

T HESE few pale Autumn flowers,
How beautiful they are !

Than all that went before,

Than all the Summer store,

How lovelier far !

And why ? they are the last !

The last! the last ! the last!

Oh ! by that little word
How many thoughts are stirred,
That whisper of the past.

Pale flowers ! pale perishing flowers !

Ye’re types of precious things :
Types of those better moments
That flit, like Life’s enjoyments,

On rapid, rapid wings.

Last hours with parting dear ones
(That time the fastest spends);
Last tears in silence shed ;

Last words half uttered;

Last looks of dying friends.

Who but would fain compress
A life into a day—

The last day spent with one,

Who, ere to-morrow’s sun,

Must leave us, and for aye !

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Floral Poetry.

6 3

O precious, precious moments !

Pale flowers ! ye’re types of those :

The saddest, sweetest, dearest;

Because, like those, the nearest
To an eternal close.

Pale flowers ! pale perishing flowers !

I woo your gentle breath :

I leave the Summer Rose
For younger, blither brows;

Tell me of change and death.

Anon.

WITHERING! WITHERING!

W ITHERING—withering—all are withering !

All of hope’s flowers that youth hath nursed;
Flowers of love too early blossoming;

Buds of ambition, too frail to burst.

Faintly—faintly—oh, how faintly !

I feel life’s pulses ebb and flow;

Yet sorrow, I know thou dealest daintily,

With one who should not wish to live moe.

Nay ! why, young heart, thus timidly shrinking ?

Why doth thy upward wing thus tire ?

Why are thy pinions so droopingly sinking,

When they should only waft thee higher?

Upward—upward—let them be waving,

Lifting the soul toward her place of birth ;

There are guerdons there, more worthy thy having,
Far more than any these lures of the earth.

Hoffman.

64 Floral Poetry.

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

T HE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,

Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere;
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the withered leaves lie dead;

They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit’s tread.

The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrub the jay,

And from the wood-top calls the crow, through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprung and stood
In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood ?

Alas ! they all are in their graves—the gentle race. of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours.

The rain is falling where they lie; but the cold November rain
Calls not from out the gloomy earth, the lovely ones again.

The Wind-flower and the Violet, they perished long ago ;

And the Wild-rose and the Orchis died amid the Summer glow ;

But on the hill the Golden-rod, and the Aster in the wood,

And the yellow Sunflower by the brook, in Autumn beauty stood.

Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men,
And the brightness of their smile was gone from upland glade and glen.

And now, when comes the calm mid-day, as still such days will come,

To call the squirrel and the bee from out their wintry home ;

Where the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the leaves are still,
And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill.

The south-wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore,
And sighs to find them in the wood, and by the stream, no more.

And then I think of one, who in her youthful beauty died ;

The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side ;

In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forest cast the leaf,

And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief;

Yet not unmeet it was, that one like that young friend of ours,

So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers.

Bryant.

PART II.—POEMS ON SPECIAL FLOWERS.

ADONIS’ COUCH.

a silken couch of rosy pride,

In midst of all, there lay a sleeping youth
Of fondest beauty; fonder in fair sooth
Than sighs could fathom, or contentment reach ;
And coverlids gold-tinted like the peach,

Or ripe October’s faded Marigolds,

Fell sleek about him in a thousand folds—

Not hiding up an Apollonian curve
Of neck and shoulder, nor the tending swerve
Of knee from knee, nor ankles pointing light;

But rather giving them to the filled sight
Officiously. Sideway his face reposed
On one white arm, and tenderly unclosed,

By tend’rest pressure, a faint damask mouth,

To slumb’ry pout; just as the morning south
Disparts a dew-lipped rose. Above his head
Four Lily stalks did their wide honours wed
To make a coronet; and round him grew
All tendrils green, of every bloom and hue,

66 Floral Poetry.

Together intertwined and trammelled fresh :

The Vine of glossy sprout; the Ivy mesh,

Shading its Ethiop berries; and Woodbine,

Of velvet leaves and bugle blooms divine;
Convolvulus in streaked vases flush;

The Creeper, mellowing for an autumn blush ;

And Virgin’s-bower, trailing airily,

With others of the sisterhood. Hard by,

Stood serene Cupids watching silently.

One, kneeling to a lyre, touched the strings,

Muffling to death the pathos with his wings;

And, ever and anon, uprose to look
At the youth’s slumber; while another took
A Willow bough, distilling odorous dew,

And shook it on his hair; another flew
In through the woven roof, and fluttering wise,
Rained Violets upon his sleeping eyes.

Keats.

THE AMARANTH.

G ROWNS inwove with Amaranth and gold,

Immortal Amaranth, a flower which once
In Paradise, fast by the Tree of Life,

Began to bloom ; but soon, for man’s offence,

To Heaven removed, where first it grew, there grows
And flowers aloft, shading the F'ount of Life,

And where the River of Bliss, through midst of Heaven,
Rolls o’er Elysian flowers her amber stream ;

With these, that never fade, the spirits elect
Bind their resplendent locks.

Milton.

Floral Poetry. 67

ALMOND-BLOSSOM.

B LOSSOM of the Almond-trees,

April’s gift to April bees,

Birthday ornament of Spring,

Flora’s fairest daughterling;

Coming when no flow’rets dare,

Trust the cruel outer air ;

When the royal King-cup bold
Dares not don his coat of gold,

And the sturdy Blackthorn spray
Keeps his silver for the May;

Coming when no flow’rets would,

Save thy lowly sisterhood;

Early Violets, blue and white,

Dying for their love of light.

Almond-blossoms, sent to teach us
That the Spring-days soon will reach us,

Lest, with longing over-tried,

We die as the Violets died.

Blossom, crowding all the tree
With thy crimson ’broidery,

Long before a leaf of green
On the bravest bough is seen;

Ah ! when winter winds are swinging
All thy red-bells into ringing,

With a bee in every bell,

Almond-blossom, we greet thee well.

Edwin Arnold.

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Floral Poetry.

THE ALMOND-TREE.

YALEETING and falling,

P Where is the bloom
Of yon fair Almond-tree?

It is sunk in the tomb.

Its tomb wheresoever

The wind may have borne
The leaves and the blossoms
Its roughness has torn.

Some there are floating
On yon fountain’s breast,

Some line the moss

Of the nightingale’s nest.

Some are just strewn

O’er the green grass below,
And there they lie stainless
As Winter’s first snow.

Yesterday, on the boughs
They hung scented and fair ;
To-day they are scattered

The breeze best knows where.

To-morrow those leaves

Will be scentless and dead,
For the kind to lament,

And the careless to tread.

Floral Poetry.

69

And is it not thus

With each hope of the heart ?

With all its best feelings,

Thus will they depart.

They’ll go forth to the world
On the wings of the air,

Rejoicing and hoping;

But what will be there ?

False lights to deceive,

False friends to delude,

Till the heart in its sorrow’s
Left only to brood.

Over feelings crushed, chilled,

Sweet hopes ever flown;

Like that tree when its green leaves
And blossoms are gone.

L. E. Landon.

£8

Floral Poetry ,

“BUTTERCUPS AND DAISIES.”

NEVER see a young hand hold
The starry bunch of white and gold,

But something warm and fresh will start
About the region of my heart.

My smile expires into a sigh;

I feel a struggling in the eye,

’Twixt humid drop and sparkling ray,

Till rolling tears have won their way;

For soul and brain will travel back
Through Memory’s chequered mazes,

To days when I but trod Life’s track
For “Buttercups and Daisies.”

Tell me, ye men of wisdom rare,

Of sober speech and silver hair;

Who carry counsel, wise and sage,

With all the gravity of age :

Oh ! say, do ye not like to hear
The accents ringing in your ear,

When sportive urchins laugh and shout,

Tossing those precious flowers about,

Springing with bold and gleesome bound,
Proclaiming joy that crazes;

And chorussing the magic sound
Of “Buttercups and Daisies”?

Floral Poetry.

7i

Are there, I ask, beneath the sky
Blossoms that knit so strong a tie
With childhood’s love? Can any please
Or light the infant eye like these ?

No, no; there’s not a bud on earth
Of richest tint, or warmest birth,

Can ever fling such zeal and zest,

Into the tiny hand and breast.

Who does not recollect the hours
When burning words and praises
Were lavished on those shining flowers,
“Buttercups and Daisies”?

There seems a bright and fairy spell
About their very names to dwell;

And though old Time has marked my brow
With care and thought, I love them now.
Smile, if ye will, but some heart-strings
Are closest linked to simplest things;

And these wild flowers will hold mine fast.
Till love, and life, and all be past;

And then the only wish I have
Is, that the one who raises
The turf-sod o’er me plant my grave
With “Buttercups and Daisies.”

Eliza Cook.

7 2

Floral Poetry.

ftp

TO THE BRAMBLE FLOWER.

JHTX.HY fruit full well the schoolboy knows,
^ Wild Bramble of the brake !

So, put thou forth thy small white Rose;

I love it for his sake.

Though Woodbines flaunt and Roses glow
O’er all the fragrant bowers,

Thou need’st not be ashamed to show
Thy satin-threaded flowers;

For dull the eye, the heart is dull
That cannot feel how fair,

Amid all beauty, beautiful
Thy tender blossoms are !

How delicate thy gauzy frill !

How rich thy branchy stem !

How soft thy voice when woods are still,
And thou sing’st hymns to them !

While silent showers are falling slow,

And, ’mid the general hush,

A sweet air lifts the little bough,

Lone whispering through the bush !

The Primrose to the grave is gone ;

The Hawthorn flower is dead;

The Violet by the mossed grey stone
Hath laid her weary head;

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Floral Poetry.

73

But thou, Wild Bramble ! back dost bring,

In all their beauteous power,

The fresh green days of life’s fair spring,

And boyhood’s blossomy hour.

Scorned Bramble of the brake ! once more
Thou bidd’st me be a boy,

To gad with thee the woodlands o’er,

In freedom and in joy.

E. Elliott.

BLUE-BELLS IN THE SHADE.

T HE choicest buds in Flora’s train, let other fingers twine;

Let others snatch the damask Rose, or wreathe the Eglantine ;
I’d leave the sunshine and parterre, and seek the woodland glade,
To stretch me on the fragrant bed of Blue-bells in the shade.

Let others cull the Daffodil, the Lily soft and fair;

And deem the Tulip’s gaudy cup most beautiful and rare ;

But give to me, oh, give to me, the coronal that’s made
Of ruby Orchis mingled with the Blue-bells from the shade !

The Sunflower and the Peony, the Poppy bright and gay,

Have no alluring charms for me; I’d fling them all away :

Exotic bloom may fill the vase, or grace the high-born maid;

But sweeter far to me, than all, are Blue-bells in the shade.

Eliza Cook.

■4

K

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Floral Poetry.

TO THE SMALL CELANDINE.

ANSIES, Lilies, King-cups, Daisies,
Let them live upon their praises ;
Long as there’s a sun that sets,
Primroses will have their glory ;
Long as there are Violets,

They will have a place in story;
There’s a flower that shall be mine,

’Tis the little Celandine.

Ere a leaf is on the bush,

In the time before the thrush
Has a thought about her nest,

Thou wilt come with half a call,
Spreading out thy glossy breast
Like a careless prodigal;

Telling tales about the sun,

When we’ve little warmth, or none.

Comfort have thou of thy merit,
Kindly unassuming spirit !

Careless of thy neighbourhood,

Thou dost show thy pleasant face
On the moor, and in the wood,

In the lane—there’s not a place,
Howsoever mean it be,

But ’tis good enough for thee.

Ill befall the yellow flowers,

Children of the flaring hours!
Buttercups that will be seen,
Whether we will see or no;

Floral Poetry.

75

Others, too, of lofty mien,

They have done as worldlings do,

Taken praise that should be thine,

Little, humble Celandine !

Prophet of delight and mirth,

Ill requited upon earth;

Herald of a mighty band,

Of a joyous train ensuing,

Serving at my heart’s command,

Tasks that are no tasks renewing;

I will sing, as doth behove,

Hymns in praise of what I love !

Wordsworth.

TO THE CROCUS.

L OWLY, sprightly little flower !

C Herald of a brighter bloom,

Bursting in a sunny hour
From thy winter tomb.

Hues you bring, bright, gay, and tender,
As if never to decay ;

Fleeting in their varied splendour —
Soon, alas ! it fades away.

Thus the hopes I long had cherished,
Thus the friends I long had known,
One by one, like you have perished,
Blighted I must fade alone.

Mary Patterson.

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Floral Poetry.

THE CLOSED CONVOLVULUS.

A N hour ago, and sunny beams

■ Were glancing o’er each airy bell;

And thou wert drinking in those gleams,
Like beauty listening love’s farewell.

And now with folded drooping leaves,
Thou seemest for that light to mourn,
Like unto one who fondly grieves

The hours that stay some friend’s return.

We cannot trace the hidden power
Which folds thine azure petals up,

When evening shadows dimly lower,

And dewdrops gem each flow’ret’s cup.

Methinks I should not wish to be
Like thee, a votary of the sun—

To bask beneath his beams, yet flee
Whene’er his brilliant race is run.

Oh ! dearer far the silent night,

And lovelier far the star-lit sky,

Than gaudy day with sunbeams bright,
And loud with nature’s minstrelsy.

The night-bird’s song is not for thee,

The beautiful, the silver moon,

The holy calm o’er flowers and tree,

The stillness—nature’s dearest boon.

Floral Poetry.

77

Thou art a reveller of day,

A fair, rejoicing child of light;

Glad while the sunbeams o’er thee play,
But drooping in the quiet night.

Like unto those who freely spend
Their kindness in our happier hours ;
But should affliction want a friend,

They prove the sun’s adoring flowers.

Anon.

THE COWSLIP’S STORY.

/YXHE Cowslip sweet was a milkmaid once,

A A milking maiden fair to see,

But the lover she worshipped was naught but a dunce,
And she grew yellow with jealousy.

For he followed a lass with bold black e’en,

And she was left to pine and cry,

And her poor heart bled ; till in gown of sheen,

She laid herself down on a bank to die.

They buried her there, and out of her grave
There grew a plant with soft green leaves,

And a pale fair bud, that pity would crave,

Sprinkled with heart-drops, ever it grieves.

Now, maidens all, be wary and wise,

Choose not a love who will leave you to pine ;

But whoso courts you in truthful guise,

Test him, and take him for Valentine.

B. Montgomerie Ranking.

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Floral Poetry.

COWSLIPS.

/\H ! fragrant dwellers of the lea,
When first the wild wood rings
With each sound of vernal minstrelsy,
When fresh the green grass springs !

What can the blessed Spring restore,
More gladd’ning than your charms ?
Bringing the memory once more
Of lovely fields and farms !

Of thickets, breezes, birds, and flowers;

Of life’s unfolding prime ;

Of thoughts as cloudless as the hours;
Of souls without a crime.

Oh ! blessed, blessed do ye seem,

For even now, I turned,

With soul athirst for wood and stream,
From streets that glared and burned.

From the hot town, where mortal care
His crowded fold doth pen ;

Where stagnates the polluted ah'

In many a sultry den.

And are ye here? and are ye here?

Drinking the dew-like wine,

’Midst living gales and waters clear,
And heaven’s unstinted shine.

Floral Poetry.

I care not that your little life
Will quickly have run through,

And the sward with summer children rife
Keep not a trace of you.

For again, again, on dewy plain,

I trust to see you rise,

When Spring renews the wild wood strain,
And bluer gleam the skies.

Again, again, when many springs
Upon my grave shall shine,

Here shall you speak of vanished things,
To living hearts of mine.

Mary Hewitt.

TO A CROCUS,

GROWING UP AND BLOSSOMING BENEATH A WALL-FLOWER.

ELCOME, wild harbinger of Spring !

" * To this small nook of earth ;
Feeling and fancy fondly cling

Round thoughts which owe their birth
To thee, and to the humble spot
Where chance has fixed thy lowly lot.

To thee—for thy rich golden bloom,
Like heaven’s fair bow on high,
Portends, amid surrounding gloom,

That brighter hours draw nigh,

When blossoms of more varied dyes
Shall ope their tints to warmer skies.

8o Floral Poetry.

Yet not the Lily, nor the Rose,

Though fairer far they be,

Can more delightful thoughts disclose
Than I derive from thee :

The eye their beauty may prefer;

The heart is thy interpreter !

Methinks in thy fair flower is seen,

By those whose fancies roam,

An emblem of that leaf of green
The faithful dove brought home,

When o’er the world of waters dark
Were driven the inmates of the ark.

That leaf betokened freedom nigh
To mournful captives there;

Thy flower foretells a sunnier sky,

And chides the dark despair
By Winter’s chilling influence flung
O’er spirits sunk, and nerves unstrung.

And sweetly has kind Nature’s hand
Assigned thy dwelling-place
Beneath a flower whose blooms expand,

With fond congenial grace,

On many a desolated pile,

Bright’ning decay with Beauty’s smile.

Thine is the flower of Hope, whose hue
Is bright with coming joy;

The Wall-flower’s that of faith, too true
For ruin to destroy;

And where, oh ! where should Hope upspring,
But under Faith’s protecting wing.

Bernard Barton.

Floral Poetry.

81

A CYPRESS LEAF:

FOR THF. GRAVE OF A DEAR ONE.

T HE feelings I have felt have died away,

The love that was my lamp death’s dews have quenched ;
The faith which, through life’s ills, ne’er knew decay,

Hath in the chill showers of the grave been drenched ;
The hopes that buoyed my spirit ’mid the spray
Of life’s wild ocean, one by one are wrenched—

Cruelly wrenched away,—and I am now
A solitary leaf on a rent bough !

The link that knit me to mankind is snapped—

Briefly it bound me to a callous world;

The fortress of my comfort hath been sapped—

Where are Joy’s banners, lightsomely unfurled,

That graced the battlements? In vapour wrapped,

In the dense smoke of stifled breath upcurled,

They drop in tatters—forming now a pall
For the sad mummy-heart that drips with gall.

I have not now of broken troth to wail,

I have not now to speak of friendship broken ;

Of Death and Death’s wild triumphs is my tale—

Of friendship faithful, and of love’s last token,

A ring !—whose holy motto ne’er shall fail

To rouse such sorrow as may ne’er be spoken :

That pictured Dove and Branch—those words, “La Paix /”
(O direful mockery!) wear my heart away!*

* A melancholy anecdote is attached to these lines ; the motto, “ La Paix,” was
engraved on the bequeathed gift of a beloved friend, who, in the bloom of youth,
fell a victim to a sudden and violent death in India.

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Floral Poetry.

“Peace —Peace! alas, there is no peace for me.

It rests with thee, belov’d one, in the grave !

Yet, when I search the cells of Memory,

Where silently the subterranean wave
Of buried hope glides on, a thought of thee—

Like sunshine on the hermit’s darkened cave—
Steals gently o’er my spirit, whispering sweet
Of realms beyond the tomb, where we shall meet!

Our love—how did it spring ? In sooth it grew,

Even as some rare exotic in a clime
Unfriendly to its growth : yet rich in hue,

Voluptuous in fragrance, as if Time
Had been to it all sunlight and soft dew,—

As if upon its freshness the cold rime
Of death should never fall! How came it, then ?
Even as the manna fell ’midst famished men,

To be snatched up in transport! And we fed
Upon affection’s banquet, that ne’er palled
Upon the spirit’s palate! Friendship shed
A light around our bosoms, which recalled
The memory of that bard whose soul was wed—
With love surpassing woman’s love, ungalled
By selfish doubts—to him, the monarch’s son,

Brave Jonathan ! Like theirs, our souls were one.

Oh ! long we loved in silence ! Neither spake

Of that which worked the thoughtful mine within;
Thou didst not guess that, sleeping or awake,

My thoughts were full of thee till thought grew sin

e§T ~ ^

Floral Poetry. 83

For it is sin of earthly things to make
Our idols; and I never hoped to win
Thy coveted affection ; but for me,

Thy heart was also yearning silently!

I was the first to speak—and words there were,

Wild words that painted fond affection’s course ; —

Oh 1 what indeed will erring tongues not dare,

When conquering Feeling prompts ! Like winds that force
From wind-harps mystic sounds, the lips declare
Thoughts that are often followed by remorse;

For passion hath a potency that breaks
Each puny bulwark callous Reason makes !

But ours was Friendship’s purest worship—pure,

Altho’ that worship bowed at earthly shrines ;

Alas ! that hearts on altars insecure

Should sacrifice their all of bliss ! There twines
O’er mankind’s sweetest hopes corruption sure,

To blast their beauty e’en whilst most it shines ! —

’Tis but to teach us there are worlds above,

Where Hope fruition finds in endless Love !

Anon.

S 4

Floral Poetry,

THE CYPRESS WREATH.

LADY, twine no wreath for me,

^ Or twine it of the Cypress tree !

Too lively grow the Lilies light,

The varnished Holly’s all too bright,

The May-flower and the Eglantine
May shade a brow less sad than mine;
But, Lady, weave no wreath for me,

Or weave it of the Cypress tree!

Let dimpled Mirth his temples twine
With tendrils of the laughing Vine ;

The manly Oak, the pensive Yew,

To patriot and to sage be due;

The Myrtle bough bids lovers live,

But that Matilda will not give ;

Then, Lady, twine no wreath for me,

Or twine it of the Cypress tree !

Let merry England proudly rear

Her blended Roses, bought so dear 3

Let Albin bind her bonnet blue

With Heath and Harebell dipped in dew;

On favoured Erin’s crest be seen

The flower she loves of emerald green -

But, Lady, twine no wreath for me,

Or twine it of the Cypress tree.

Floral Poetry.

85

Strike the wild harp, while maids prepare
The Ivy meet for minstrel’s hair;

And, while his crown of Laurel-leaves,

With bloody hand the victor weaves,

Let the loud trump his triumph tell;

But, when you hear the passing-bell,

Then, Lady, twine a wreath for me,

And twine it of the Cypress tree.

Yes ! twine for me the Cypress bough ;

But, O Matilda, twine not now !

Stay till a few brief months are past,

And I have looked and loved my last!

When villagers my shroud bestrew
With Pansies, Rosemary, and Rue,—

Then, Lady, weave a wreath for me,

And weave it of the Cypress tree.

Sir Walter Scott.

86

Floral Poetry.

DAFFODILS.

WANDERED lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden Daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle in the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay :

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee :

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft when on my couch I lie,

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude ;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.

Wordsworth.

Floral Poetry

§7

THE DAISY.

JYTHERE is a flower, a little flower,

^ With silver crest and golden eye,

That welcomes every changing hour,

And weathers every sky.

The prouder beauties of the field
In gay but quick succession shine ;

Race after race their honours yield,

They flourish and decline.

But this small flower to nature dear,

While moon and stars their courses run,

Wreathes the whole circle of the year,
Companion of the sun.

It smiles upon the lap of May,

To sultry August spreads its charms,

Lights pale October on its way,

And twines December’s arms.

The purple Heath, and golden Broom,

On moory mountains catch the gale;

O’er lawns the Lily sheds perfume,

The Violet in the vale ;

But this bold floweret climbs the hill,
Hides in the forest, haunts the glen,

Stays on the margin of the rill,

Peeps round the fox’s den.

Floral Poetry.

Within the garden’s cultured round
It shares the sweet Carnation’s bed;

And blooms in consecrated ground
In honour of the dead.

The lambkin crops its crimson gem;

The wild-bee murmurs on its breast;

The blue-fly bends its pensile stem,

Light o’er the skylark’s nest.

’Tis Flora’s page;—in every place,

In every season fresh and fair,

It opens with perennial grace,

And blossoms everywhere.

On waste and woodland, rock and plain,

Its humble buds unheeded rise ;

The Rose has but a summer reign,

The Daisy never dies.

Montgomery.

THE DAISY.

T HESE flow’res white and red,

Such that men callen Daisies in our town ;
To them have I so great affection,

As I said erst, when comen is the May,

That in my bed there daweth me no day,

That I n’am up and walking in the mead
To see this flow’r against the sunne' spread,
When it upriseth early by the morrow ;

That blissful sight softeneth all my sorrow;

So glad am I when that I have prese'nce
Of it, to doen it all reverence.

Chaucer.

Flo 7'a l Poetiy.

TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY,

ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOUGH.

W EE, modest, crimson-tipped flower,

Thou’st met me in an evil hour;

For I maun crush among the stour
Thy slender stem ;

To spare thee now is past my power,

Thou bonnie gem.

Alas ! it’s no thy neebour sweet,

The bonnie lark, companion meet,

Bending thee ’mang the dewy weet,

Wi’ speckled breast,

When upward springing, blythe to greet
The purpling east.

Cauld blew the bitter biting north
Upon thy early, humble birth ;

Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth
Amid the storm,

Scarce reared above the parent earth
Thy tender form.

The flaunting flowers our gardens yield,

High sheltering woods and wa’s maun shield;
But thou, beneath the random bield
O’ clod or stane,

Adorns the histie stibble-field,

Unseen, alane.

M

9 °

Floral Poetry.

There, in thy scanty mantle clad,

Thy snawy bosom sunward spread,

Thou lifts thy unassuming head
In humble guise ;

But now the share uptears thy bed,

And low thou lies !

Such is the fate of artless maid,

Sweet flow’ret of the rural shade t
By love’s simplicity betrayed,

And guileless trust,

Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid
Low i’ the dust.

Such is the fate of simple bard,

On life’s rough ocean, luckless starred !
Unskilful he to note the card
Of prudent lore,

Till billows rage, and gales blow hard,

And whelm him o’er !

Such fate to suffering worth is given,

Who long with wants and woes has striven,
By human pride or cunning driven,

To misery’s brink,

Till wrenched of every stay but Heaven,

He ruined sink !

E’en thou who mourn’st the Daisy’s fate,
That fate is thine—no distant date;

Floral Poetry.

91

Stern Ruin’s ploughshare drives elate,

Full on thy bloom,

Till crushed beneath the furrow’s weight,

Shall be thy doom.

Burns.

TO DAFFODILS.

Y?CAIR Daffodils, we weep to see
^ You haste away so soon;

As yet, the early-rising sun

Has not attained his noon :
Stay, stay,

Until the hastening day
Has run

But to the even-song ;

And having prayed together, we
Will go with you along!

We have short time to stay as you;

We have as short a Spring;

As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you or any thing:

We die,

As your hours do; and dry
Away

Like to the Summer’s rain,

Or as the pearls of morning dew,
Ne’er to be found again.

Herrick.

Floral Poetry.

THE DAISY IN INDIA.

mHRICE welcome, little English flower
A Thy mother country’s white and red,
In Rose or Lily, till this hour
Never to me such beauty spread :
Transplanted from thy island bed,

A treasure in a grain of earth,

Strange as a spirit from the dead
Thy embryo sprang to birth.

Thrice welcome, little English flower !

Whose tribes beneath our native skies
Shut close their leaves while vapours lower
But when the sun’s gay beams arise,
With unabashed but modest eyes,

Follow his motion to the west,

Nor cease to gaze till daylight dies,

Then fold themselves to rest.

Thrice welcome, little English flower !

To this resplendent hemisphere,

Where Flora’s giant offspring tower
In gorgeous liveries all the year ;

Thou, only thou, art little here,

Like worth unfriended and unknown,

Yet to my British heart more dear
Than all the torrid zone.

Floral Poetry.

Thrice welcome, little English flower !

Of early scenes beloved by me,

While happy in my father’s bower,

Thou shalt the blithe memorial be ;

The fairy sports of infancy,

Youth’s golden age, and manhood’s prime,
Home, country, kindred, friends—with thee,
Are mine in this far clime.

Thrice welcome, little English flower !

I’ll rear thee with a trembling hand ;

O for the April sun and shower,

The sweet May-dews of that fair land,
Where Daisies, thick as star-light, stand
In every walk!—that here might shoot
Thy scions, and thy buds expand,

A hundred from one root!

Thrice welcome, little English flower !

To me the pledge of hope unseen :

When sorrow would my soul o’erpower
For joys that were, or might have been,
I’ll call to mind, how—fresh and green—

I saw thee waking from the dust;

Then turn to heaven, with brow serene,

And place in God my trust.

Montgomery

Floral Poetry.

TO THE DAISY.

Y N youth from rock to rock I went,

A From hill to hill in discontent
Of pleasure high and turbulent,

Most pleased when most uneasy ;

But now my own delights I make,

My thirst at every rill can slake,

And gladly Nature’s love partake,

Of thee, sweet Daisy !

Thee Winter in the garland wears
That thinly decks his few grey hairs ;
Spring parts the clouds with softest airs,
That she may sun thee ;

Whole Summer-fields are thine by right ;
And Autumn, melancholy wight,

Doth in thy crimson head delight
When rains are on thee.

Be Violets in their secret mews
The flowers the wanton Zephyrs choose ;
Proud be the Rose, with rains and dews
Her head impearling;

Thou liv’st with less ambitious aim,

Yet hast not gone without thy fame ;
Thou art indeed, by many a claim,

The Poet’s darling.

If to a rock from rains he fly,

Or, some bright day of April sky,
Imprisoned by hot sunshine, lie
Near the green holly,

Floral Poetry.

And wearily at length should fare;

He needs but look about, and there
Thou art! — a friend at hand, to scare
His melancholy.

A hundred times, by rock or bower,

Ere thus I have lain couched an hour,
Have I derived from thy sweet power
Some apprehension;

Some steady love ; some brief delight;
Some memory that'had taken flight;

Some chime or fancy wrong or right,

Or stray invention.

If stately passions in me burn,

And one chance look to thee should turn
I drink out of an humbler urn
A lowlier pleasure;

The homely sympathy that heeds
The common life, our nature breeds ;

A wisdom fitted to the needs
Of hearts at leisure.

Fresh-smitten by the morning ray,

When thou art up, alert and gay,

Then, cheerful flower ! my spirits play
With kindred gladness :

And when, at dusk, by dews opprest
Thou sink’st, the image of thy rest
Hath often eased my pensive breast
Of careful sadness.

And all day long I number yet,

All seasons through, another debt,

Which I, wherever thou are met,

To thee am owing ;

q6

Floral Poetry.

if

An instinct call it, a blind sense—-
A happy, genial influence,

Coming one knows not how, nor whence,

Nor whither going.

Child of the year! that round dost run
Thy pleasant course,—when day’s begun,

As ready to salute the sun
As lark or leveret,

Thy long-lost praise thou shalt regain ;

Nor be less dear to future men
Than in old time;—thou not in vain
Art Nature’s favourite.

Wordsworth.

THE DAISY.

H OT worlds on worlds, in phalanx deep,
Need we to prove that God is here ;
The Daisy, fresh from Winter’s sleep,

Tells of His hand in lines as clear.

For who but He who arched the skies,
And poured the day-spring’s living flood,
Wondrous alike in all He tries,

Could rear the Daisy’s purple bud;

Mould its green cup, its wiry stem,

Its fringed border nicely spin,

And cut the gold-embossed gem
That, set in silver, gleams within ;

And fling it unrestrained and free,

O’er hill and dale, and desert sod,

That man, where’er he walks, may see,

At every step, the stamp of God ?

John Mason Good.

if

Floral Poetry.

97

TO THE DAISY.

W ITH little here to do or see

Of things that in the great world be,
Daisy ! again I talk to thee,

For thou art worthy;

Thou unassuming commonplace
Of Nature, with that homely face,

And yet with something of a grace
Which love makes for thee !

Oft on the dappled turf at ease
I sit, and play with similes,

Loose types of things through all degrees,
Thoughts of thy raising ;

And many a fond and idle name
I give to thee, for praise or blame,

As is the humour of the game,

While I am gazing.

A nun demure, of lowly port;

Or sprightly maiden, of Love’s court,

In thy simplicity the sport
Of all temptations;

A queen in crown of rubies drest ;

A starveling in a scanty vest;

Are all, as seems to suit thee best,

Thy appellations.

A little Cyclops, with one eye
Staring to threaten and defy,-
That thought comes next — and instantly
The freak is over;

N

9 8

Floral Poetry.

The shape will vanish—and behold
A silver shield with boss of gold,
That spreads itself, some fairy bold
In fight to cover !

I see thee glittering from afar—

And then thou art a pretty star ;

Not quite so fair as many are
In heaven above thee !

Yet like a star, with glittering crest,

Self-poised in air thou seem’st to rest;—

May peace come never to his nest,

Who shall reprove thee !

Bright flower ! for by that name at last,

When all my reveries are past,

I call thee, and to that cleave fast,

Sweet silent creature !

That breath’st with me in sun and air,

Do thou, as thou art wont, repair
My heart with gladness, and a share
Of thy meek nature.

Wo7-dsworth.

THE DAISY.

Y OW, say, what has the Daisy done,
Ah That none a song has yet begun,
Wherein is modestly set forth
This humble, simple flow’ret’s worth ?
I’ll of the Daisy sing to-day,

And in its praise shall be my lay.

99

Floral Poetry .

In proper time the Daisies may
Rejoice our hearts like Roses gay;

Who values not the Daisy, ne’er
Shall stay among our circle here;

For we will sing a Daisy-song—

Who likes it not may hold his tongue.

Full well you all, my masters, know
How February’s clad in snow;

But once the thaw-wind sweep the plain,

And lo, the Daisy blooms again !

Thro’ Winter’s raging strife to be
A token of Spring’s victory.

Now when that herald I espy,

I feel my bosom bounding high.

It seems as though, in joyful guise,

To life renewed, all dead things rise;

And Death, to me, says with a smile,

“ My subjects sleep but for awhile.”

In Autumn, too, I often see,

When leaves drop from the sapless tree,

The Daisy blooms in beauty on,

As though its morn not yet were gone.

Heaven grant that once my Autumn hour
May be like that of Daisy flower.

I pity much the woeful wight
Who holds the Daisy’s value light.

Who smaller beauties can despise,

On greater things will close his eyes;

Do now, to teach us all thy worth
Thou little modest flower, stand forth.

From the German.

f?

t

Floral Poetry.

TO A DAISY.

B RIGHT flower! whose home is everywhere,
Bold in maternal Nature’s care,

And all the long year through, the heir
Of joy or sorrow ;

Methinks that there abides in thee
Some concord with humanity,

Given to no other flower I see
The forest thorough !

Is it that Man is soon deprest?

A thoughtless Thing ! who, once unblest,

Does little on his memory rest,

Or on his reason :

But thou would’st teach him how to find
A shelter under every wind,

A hope for times that are unkind,

And every season ?

Thou wander’st the wide world about,
Unchecked by pride or scrupulous doubt,

With friends to greet thee, or without,

Yet pleased and willing;

Meek, yielding to the occasion’s call,

And all things suffering from all,

Thy function apostolical
In peace fulfilling.

Wordsworth.

Floral Poetry.

if

i?

THE D A I.S Y.

RAMPLED underfoot

A The Daisy lives, and strikes its little root
Into the lap of time; centuries may come
And pass away into the silent tomb,

And still the child, hid in the womb of Time
Shall smile and pluck them ; when this simple rhyme
Shall be forgotten, like a churchyard stone,

Or lingering lie unnoticed and alone,

When eighteen hundred years, our common date,
Grow many thousands in their marching state.

Ay, still the child, with pleasure in his eye,

Shall cry, the Daisy ! a familiar cry— -
And run to pluck it in the self-same state :

And, like a child himself, when all was new,

Might smile with wonder and take notice too :

Its little golden bosom filled with snow,

Might win e’en Eve to stoop down and shew
Her partner, Adam, in the silken grass,

The little gem, that smiled where pleasure was.
And, loving Eve, from Eden followed ill
And bloomed with sorrow,—and lies smiling still,
As once in Eden, under Heaven’s breath,

So now on Earth, and on the lap of death
It smiles for ever.

Clare.

4

102

Floral Poetry.

THE KNIGHT AND THE LADY FAIR.

“ FORGET-ME-NOT."

OGETHER they sate by a river’s side
A knight and a lady gay,

And they watched the deep and eddying tide
Round a flowering islet stray.

And “ Oh for that flower of brilliant hue,”

Said the lady fair,

“ To grace my neck with blossoms blue
And braid my nut-brown hair! ”

The knight has plunged in the whirling wave
All for his lady’s smile :

And he swims the stream with courage brave,

And he gains yon flowery isie.

And his fingers have cropped the blossoms blue,
And the prize they backward bear :

To deck his love with brilliant hue
And braid her nut-brown hair.

But the way is long and the current strong,

And alas for that gallant knight!

For the waves prevail and his stout arms fail,
Though cheered by his lady’s sight.

Then the blossoms blue to the bank he threw,

Ere he sank in the eddying tide !

And “ Lady, I’m gone, thine own true knight,
Forget-me-not,” he cried.

Floral Poetry.

This farewell pledge the lady caught:

And hence, as legends say,

The flower is a sign to awaken thought
For friends who are far away.

For the lady fair, of the knight so true,

Still remembered the hapless lot:

And she cherished the flower of brilliant hue,

And she braided her hair with the blossoms blue,
And then called it “ Forget-me-not.”

Bishop Mani.

THE FORGET-ME-NOT.

Y OT on the mountain’s shelving side,
Nor in the cultivated ground,

Nor in the garden's painted pride,

The flower I seek is found.

Where Time on sorrow’s page of gloom
Has fixed its envious lot,

Or swept the record from the tomb,

It says, Forget-me-not.

And this is still the loveliest flower,
The fairest of the fair,

Of all that deck my lady’s bower,

Or bind her floating hair.

A non.

Floral Poetry.

104

THE FAIREST FLOWER.

Cfje Hay of tfjt ffiaptibe ffiarl.

THE EARL.

Y KNOW a floweret passing fair,

A And for its loss I pain me ;

Fain would I hence to seek its lair,
But for these bonds that chain me.

Ah, heavy, heavy is my cheer,

For till I came a prisoner here,

That flower was ever near me.

All round the castle’s beetling steep,

I let my glances wander;

But cannot from the dizzy keep
Descry it, there or yonder.

Oh, he who’d bring it to my sight,

Or were he knave, or were he knight,
Should be my friend for ever!

THE ROSE.

I blossom bright thy lattice near,

And hear what thou hast spoken;

’Tis me—brave ill-starred cavalier —
The Rose, thou would’st betoken !

Thy spirit spurns the base, the low,

And ’tis the queen of flowers, I know,
That in thy bosom reigneth.

THE EARL.

All honour to thy purple cheer,

From swathes of verdure blowing;

Well may’st thou be to maidens dear,
As gold or jewels glowing.

Floral Poetry.

Thy wreaths adorn the fairest face,

Yet art thou not the flower, whose grace
In solitude I pine for.

THE LILY.

A haughty place usurps the Rose,

And haughtier still doth covet •

But where the Lily meekly blows,

Some gentle eye will love it.

The heart that’s warm and fond and true,
And pure as mine, when bathed in dew,
Must value me the highest.

THE EARL.

Ah, pure and true of heart am 1,

And free from sinful failing,

Yet must I here a captive lie,

My loneliness bewailing.

I see the symbol fair in you
Of many maidens pure and true,

Yet know a something dearer.

THE CARNATION.

That may thy warder’s garden show
In me, the bright Carnation,

Else would the old man tend me so
With loving adoration ?

In perfect round my petals meet,

And lifelong are with scent replete,
And with the loveliest colour.

THE EARL.

The sweet Carnation none may slight,
It is the gardener’s pleasure;

Now he unfolds it to the light,

Now shields from it his treasure.

io6

Floral Poetry.

&

ip

But no—the flower for which I pant,
No rare, no brilliant charms can vaunt,
’Tis ever meek and lowly.

THE VIOLET.

Concealed and drooping I retreat,
Nor willingly had spoken,

But now my silence, since ’tis meet,
It shall at length be broken.

If I be that which fills thy thought,
How must I grieve, that I may not
To thee waft all my odours !

THE EARL.

I love the Violet, indeed,

So modest in perfection,

So gently sweet—yet more I need,

To soothe my heart’s dejection.

To thee alone the truth I’ll speak,

Not on this rock, so bare and bleak,
Is to be found my darling.

Earth’s truest wife, in yonder glen,

Is wandering by the river;

Till I, her lord, am free again,

She’ll sigh and weep for ever.

When a blue floweret by that spot
She plucks, and says— Forget-me-not,
Here in my cell I feel it.

&

Floral Poetry.

107

Yes, when two hearts are twined, love’s might
Is felt, whate’er the distance;

So I, within this dungeon’s night,

Cling ever to existence.

And when my heart is nigh distraught,

If I but say—F orget-me-not,

Hope burns again within me !

Goethe.

Translated by Theodore Martin.

THE FURZE.

’ fJi ID scattered foliage, pale and sere,

AUA Thy kind flow’ret cheers the gloom ;
And offers to the waning year
The tribute of its golden bloom.

Beneath November’s clouded sky,

In chill December’s stormy hours,

Thy blossom meets the traveller’s eye,

Gay as the buds of summer bowers.

Flower of the dark and wintry day!

Emblem of friendship ! thee I hail!
Blooming when others fade away,

And brightest when their hues grow pale.

Anon.

io8

Floral Poetry .

THE SCARLET GERANIUM.

WILL not sing the mossy Rose,

The Jasmine sweet, or Lily fair,

The tints the rich Carnation shows,

The Stock’s sweet scent that fills the air.

Full many a bard has sung their praise
In metres smooth, and polished line;

A simple flower and humbler lays
May best befit a pen like mine.

There is a small but lovely flower,

With crimson star and calyx brown,

On pathway side beneath the bower,

By Nature’s hand profusely strown.

Inquire you when this flow’ret springs ?—-
When Nature wakes to mirth and love,

When all her fragrance Summer flings,

When latest Autumn chills the grove.

Like the sweet bird whose name it bears,

’Midst falling leaves and fading flowers,

The passing traveller it cheers,

In shortened days and darksome hours.

Floral Poetry.

109

And should you ask me where it blows,

I answer, on the mountains bare,

High on the tufted rock it grows,

In lonely glens or meadows fair.

It blooms amidst those flowery dales,

Where winding Aire pursues its course;

It smiles upon the craggy fells
That rise around its lofty source.

There are its rosy petals shown,

’Midst curious forms and mosses rare,

Imbedded in the dark grey stone,

When not another flower is there.

Oh ! emblem of that steadfast mind

Which, through the varying scenes of life,

By genuine piety refined,

Holds on its way ’midst noise and strife.

Though dark the impending tempest lower,
The path of beauty it espies,

Calm ’midst the whirlwind and the shower,
Thankful when brighter hours arise.

Oh ! could our darkened minds discern
In thy sweet form this lesson plain,

Could we it practically learn,

Herb Robert would not bloom in vain.

Anon.

Floral Poetry.

*£P

I 10

THE GILLYFLOWER.

r-

YY OW gaily on yon ruined wall
The Gillyflower lifts its head;

Whilst crumbling masses frequent fall,

And leave its fibrous roots displayed.

Sweet flower ! thou seek’st not to unfold
Thy charms ’midst fashion’s cultured train,

But tint’st the rifted mound with gold,
Where solitude and silence reign.

But ah ! where now thy waving bloom
Fills with rich fragrance all the air,

Far lovelier charms have met their doom,

In cloistral glooms and blank despair.

There buds of beauty, genius, worth,

Ere they could blossom oft were pent;

Though born to scatter bliss o’er earth,

A cheerless, fruitless life they spent.

Torn from the world and social ties,

In Superstition’s depths immersed,

With none their gifts to scan or prize,

And heaven’s decree in them reversed.

Not such, sweet flower, thy happier lot,

Thy humble end not rendered vain;

By nature destined for the spot,

Thou gladd’st the wide surrounding plain.

Thomas Gillet.

Floral Poetry.

111

LESSONS FROM THE GORSE.

M OUNTAIN Gorses, ever-golden,

Cankered not the whole year long !

Do ye teach us to be strong,

Howsoever pricked and holden,

Like your thorny blooms, and so,

Trodden on by rain and snow,

Up the hill-side of this life, as bleak as where ye grow ?

Mountain blossoms, shining blossoms,

Do ye teach us to be glad,

When no Summer can be had,

Blooming in our inward bosoms ?

Ye, whom God preserveth still,

Set as lights upon a hill,

Tokens to the wintry earth that Beauty liveth still!

Mountain Gorses, do ye teach us
From that academic chair,
Canopied with azure air,

That the wisest word man reaches
Is the humblest he can speak?

Ye, who live on mountain peak,

Yet live low along the ground, beside the grasses meek !

Mountain Gorses, since Linnreus
Knelt beside you on the sod,

For your beauty thanking God, —
For your teaching—ye should see us
Bowing in prostration new !

Whence arisen,—if one or two

Drops be on our cheeks — O, world, they are not tears but dew.

Elizabeth B. Browning.

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Floral Poetry.

TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN.

T HOU blossom, bright with Autumn dew,
And coloured with the heaven’s own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night.

Thou comest not when Violets lean
O’er wandering brooks and springs unseen,

Or Columbines, in purple dressed,

Nod o’er the ground-bird’s hidden nest.

Thou waitest late, and com’st alone,

When woods are bare and birds are flown,

And frosts and shortening days portend
The aged year is near its end.

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye,

Look through its fringes to the sky,

Blue—blue—as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.

I would that thus, when I shall see
The hour of death draw near to me,

Hope, blossoming within the heart,

May look to heaven as I depart.

William Cullen Bryanl.

Floral Poetry.

IT 3

THE HAWTHORN TREE—THE GLORY OF MAY.

MONG the many buds proclaiming May,
(Decking the fields in holy-day’s array,

Striving who shall surpass in bravery,)

Mark the fair blooming of the Hawthorn tree;
Who, finely clothed in a robe of white,

Feeds full the wanton eye with May’s delight.
Yet, for the bravery that she is in,

Doth neither handle card nor wheel to spin,

Nor changeth robes but twice, is never seen
In other colours than in white or green.

Learn then content, young shepherd, from this tree,
Whose greatest wealth is Nature’s livery;

And richest ingots never toil to find,

Nor care for poverty, but of the mind.

Browne.

THE IIAREBEL L.

“ YAOR me,” — she stopped, and, looking round,

^ Plucked a blue Harebell from the ground, —

“ For me, whose memory scarce conveys
An image of more splendid days,

This little flower that loves the lea,

May well my simple emblem be;

It drinks heaven’s dew, blithe as the Rose
That in the king’s own garden grows;

And when I place it in my hair,

Allan, a bard is bound to swear
He ne’er saw coronet so fair.”

Sir Walter Scott.

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Floral Poetry.

1 x 4

THE HAREBELL.

V N Spring’s green lap there blooms a flower,

A Whose cup imbibes each vernal shower;

That sips fresh nature’s balmy dew,

Clad in her sweetest, purest blue;

Yet shuns the ruddy eye of morning,

The shaggy wood’s brown shades adorning.

Simple flow’ret! child of May !

Though hid from the broad gaze of day,

Doomed in the shade thy sweets to shed,
Unnoticed droops thy languid head;

Still Nature’s darling thou’lt remain,

She feeds thee with her softest rain;

Fills each sweet bud with honeyed tears,

With genial gales thy bosom cheers.

Ah, then unfold thy simple charms,

In yon deep thicket’s circling arms,

Far from the fierce and sultry glare,

No heedless hand shall harm thee there;

Still, then, avoid the gaudy scene,

The flaunting sun, th’ embroidered green,

And bloom and fade, with chaste reserve, unseen.

Caroline Symmons.

Floral Poetry.

THE HAZEL.

InJHENE’ER I see soft hazel eyes
* * And nut-brown curls,

I think of those bright days I spent
Among the Limerick girls ;

When up through Cratla woods I went,
Nutting with thee;

And we plucked the glossy clustering fruit
From many a bending tree.

Beneath the hazel boughs we sat,

Thou, love, and I,

And the gathered nuts lay in thy lap,

Beneath thy downcast eye :

But little we thought of the store we’d won,

I, love, or thou ;

For our hearts were full, and we dare not own
The love that’s spoken now.

Oh, there’s wars for willing hearts in Spain,
And high Germanie !

And Ell come back, ere long, again,

With knightly fame and fee :

And I’ll come back, if I ever come back,
Faithful to thee,

That sat with thy white lap full of nuts
Beneath the Hazel tree.

AB

Samuel Ferguson.

Floral Poetry.

H E ART’S-E AS E.

V N gardens oft a beauteous flower there grows,

A By vulgar eyes unnoticed and unseen ;

In sweet serenity it humbly blows,

And rears its purple head to deck the green.

This flower, as nature’s poet sweetly sings,

Was once milk-white, and Heart’s-ease was its name,

Till wanton Cupid poised its roseate wings,

A vestal’s sacred bosom to inflame.

With treacherous aim the god his arrow drew,

Which she with icy coldness did repel,

Rebounding thence with feathery speed it flew,

Till on this lonely flower, at last, it fell.

Heart’s-ease no more the wandering shepherd found;
No 4 *more the nymphs its snowy form possess;

Its white now changed to purple by Love’s wound,
Heart's-ease no more,—’tis Love in Idleness.

Mrs. Sheridan.

HEAR T’S-E A S E.

Y USED to love thee, simple flower,

A To love thee dearly when a boy;

For thou didst seem in childhood’s hour
The smiling type of childhood’s joy.

But now thou only work’st my grief,

By waking thoughts of pleasures fled.
Give me—give me the withered leaf,
That falls on Autumn’s bosom dead.

Floral Poetry,

For that ne’er tells of what has been,

But warns me what I soon shall be ;

It looks not back on pleasure’s scene,

But points unto futurity.

I love thee not, thou simple flower,

For thou art gay, and I am lone;

Thy beauty died with childhood’s hour—

The Heart’s-ease from my path is gone.

Anon.

HEART’S-EASE.

I SAW,

Flying between the cold moon and the earth,

Cupid all armed • a certain aim he took
At a fair vessel throned in the west,

And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow,

As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts.

But I might see young Cupid’s fiery shaft
Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon,
And the imperial vot’ress passed on,

In maiden meditation, fancy-free.

Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell :

It fell upon a little western flower,

Before milk-white, now purple with Love’s wound,
And maidens call it Love in Idleness.

The juice of it, on sleeping eyelids laid,

Will make a man or woman madly dote
Upon the next live creature that it sees.

Shakspere.

118

Floral Poetry.

THE HOLLY TREE.

0 READER! hast thou ever stood to see
The. Holly tree?

The eye that contemplates it well perceives
Its glossy leaves,

Ordered by an Intelligence so wise
As might confound the atheist’s sophistries.

Below a circling fence its leaves are seen,
Wrinkled and keen ;

No grazing cattle through their prickly round
Can reach to wound;

But, as they grow where nothing is to fear,
Smooth and unarmed the pointless leaves appear.

I love to view these things with curious eyes,

And moralise;

And in this wisdom of the Holly tree
Can emblems see,

Wherewith, perchance, to make a pleasant rhyme;
One which may profit in the after-time.

Thus, though abroad, perchance, I might appear
Harsh and austere;

To those who on my leisure would intrude,
Reserved and rude ;

Gentle at home amid my friends I’d be,

Like the high leaves upon the Holly tree.

And should my youth, as youth is apt, I know,
Some harshness show,

All vain asperities I, day by day,

Would wear away,

Till the smooth temper of my age should be
Like the high leaves upon the Holly tree.

Floral Poetry.

And as, when all the summer trees are seen
So bright and green,

The Holly leaves their fadeless hues display,

Less bright than they;

But when the bare and wintry woods we see,

What then so cheerful as the Holly tree ?

So, serious should my youth appear among
The thoughtless throng;

So would I seem, among the young and gay,

More grave than they;

That in my age as cheerful I might be
As the green winter of the Holly tree.

R. Southey.

THE HELIOTROPE.

T HERE is a flower, whose modest eye
Is turned with looks of light and love,
Who breathes her softest, sweetest sigh,
Whene’er the sun is bright above.

Let clouds obscure, or darkness veil,

Her fond idolatry is fled ;

Her sighs no move their sweets exhale,

The loving eye is cold and dead.

Can’st thou not trace a moral here,

False flatterer of the prosperous hour?
Let but an adverse cloud appear,

And thou art faithless as the flower.

Anon.

Floral Poetry.

TO THE HEPATICA.

S WEET gem of Flora’s earliest bower !

Uprear thy blushing head;

Though wintry skies upon thee lower,
And snows around are spread;

Still let thy lovely petals glow,

Arrayed in all their charms,

And to distrustful mortals show,

Life buds in death’s cold arms.

Sweet gem ! thy blush is like the glow
By convalescence dealt,

That paints the cheek, and gilds the brow,
Where sickness long had dwelt;

Or like the radiant quickening smile,

By kind affection given,

That soothes the heart, despair and guile
Had sunk and almost riven.

Invite thy sisters of the plain,
Each vernal fragrant sweet;

Till with gay tribes of every stain,
The garden smiles replete :

And let thy lovely petals glow,
Still clad in all their charms;
And to distrustful mortals show
Life buds in death’s cold arms.

Thomas Gillrf.

Floral Poetry.

I 2 I

HOLLY.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

HE Rose it is the love of June,

* The Violet that of Spring,

But all those faithless fading flowers,

That take the south-wind’s wing,

As craven blooms I hold in scorn,

The Holly’s the wreath for a Christmas morn !

Its berries are red as a maiden’s lip,

Its leaves are of changeless green,

And anything changeless now, I wis,

Is somewhat rare to be seen!—

The Holly which fall and frost has borne,

The Holly’s the wreath for a Christmas morn !

Its edges are set in keen array;

They are fairy weapons, bared;

And, in an unlucky world like ours,

’Tis well to be prepared.

Like helm on crest of warrior borne,

The Holly’s the wreath for a Christmas morn !

The Holly it is no green-house plant,

But grows in the common air ;

In the peasant’s lattice, the castle hall,

Its green leaves alike are there.

Its lesson should in mind be borne—

The Holly’s the wreath for a Christmas morn !

Anon.

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122

Floral Poetry.

HOLLY AND IVY.

PART I.

H OLLY and Ivy made a great party,

Who should have the mastery
In lands where they go.

Then spake the Holly, “ I am fierce and jolly,

I will have the mastery

In lands where we go.”

Then spake Ivy, “ I am loud and proud,

And I will have the mastery
In lands where we go.”

Then spake Holly, and bent him down on his knee,
“ I pray thee, gentle Ivy,

Essay me no villany

In lands where we go.”

PART II. — THE REPLY.

Nay, Ivy, nay, it shall not be, I wis,

Let Holly have the mastery as the manner is.

Holly standeth in the hail fair to behold,

Ivy standeth without the door; she is full sore a-cold.

Nay, Ivy, nay, &c.

Holly and his merry men, they dance now and they sing;
Ivy and her maidens, they weep, and their hands wring.

Nay, Ivy, nay, &c.

Holly he hath berries as red as any rose,

The foresters, the hunters, keep them from the does.

Nay, Ivy, nay, &c.

4

Floral Poetry.

Ivy she hath berries as black as any sloe,

There come the owls and eat them as they go.
Nay, Ivy, nay, &c.

Holly he hath birds a full fair flock,

The nightingale, the popinjay, the gentle laverock.
Nay, Ivy, nay, &c.

Good Ivy, say to us, what birds hast thou,

None but the owlet that cries How ! How !

Nay, Ivy, nay, &c.

Ancient Carols.

THE HYACINTH.

C HILD of the Spring, thou charming flower,
No longer in confinement lie,

Arise to light, thy form discover.

Rival the azure of the sky.

The rains are gone, the storms are o’er ;

Winter retires to make thee way;

Come then, thou sweetly blooming flower,
Come, lovely stranger, come away.

The sun is dressed in beaming smiles,

To give thy beauties to the day :

Young Zephyrs wait with gentlest gales,

To fan thy bosom as they play.

Casimir.

Floral Poetry.

12 4

THE HONEYSUCKLE.

(TEE the Honeysuckle twine
^ Round this casement:—’tis a shrine
Where the heart doth incense give,

And the pure affections live
In the mother’s gentle breast
By her smiling infant pressed.

Blessed shrine ! dear, blissful home !
Source whence happiness doth come !
Round by the cheerful hearth we meet
All things beauteous-—all things sweet—
Every solace of man’s life,

Mother—daughter—sister—wife.

England, isle of free and brave,
Circled by the Atlantic wave !
Though we seek the fairest land
That the south wind ever fanned,
Yet we cannot hope to see
Homes so holy as in thee.

As the tortoise turns its head
Towards its native ocean-bed,
Howsoever far it be
From its own beloved sea,
Thus, dear Albion, evermore
Do we turn to seek thy shore!

Countess of Blessington.

Floral Poetry.

125

HOLLY SONG.

B LOW, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude ;

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh-ho ! sing heigh-ho ! unto the green Holly;
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly;
Then, heigh-ho ! the Holly !

This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,

Thou dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:

Though thou the waters warp,

Thy sting is not so sharp
As friend remembered not.

Heigh-ho ! sing heigh-ho ! unto the green Holly;
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly;
Then heigh-ho ! the Holly !

This life is most jolly.

Shakspere.

Floral Poetry.

THE IVY SONG.

H ! how could fancy crown with thee
In ancient days the God of Wine,

And bid thee at the banquet be
‘WAToVV Companion of the Vine !
vlv Thy home, wild plant, is where each sound
Of revelry hath long been o’er,

Where song’s full notes once pealed around,

But now are known no more.

The Roman on his battle-plains,

Where kings before his eagles bent,

Entwined thee with exulting strains
Around the victor’s tent !

Yet there, though fresh in glossy green,
Triumphantly thy boughs might wave,

Better thou lov’st the silent scene
Around the victor’s grave.

Oh ! many a temple, once sublime,

Beneath a blue Italian sky,

Hath nought of beauty left by time,

Save thy wild tapestry !

And, reared ’midst crags and clouds, ’tis thine
To wave where banners waved of yore,

O’er towers that crest the noble Rhine,

Along the rocky shore.

High from the fields of air look down
Those eyries of a vanished race,

Homes of the mighty, whose renown
Hath passed, and left no trace.

Floral Poetry.

127

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But there thou art! thy foliage bright,

Unchanged the mountain storm can brave;

Thou, that wilt climb the loftiest height,

Or deck the humblest grave !

’Tis still the same ! where’er we tread
The wrecks of human power we see—

The marvels of all ages fled,

Left to decay and thee!

And still let man his fabrics rear,

August in beauty, grace, and strength ;

Days pass—thou Ivy never sere !—

And all is thine at length !

Mrs. Usmans.

THE IVY.

H AST thou seen, in Winter’s stormiest day,

The trunk of a blighted Oak,

Not dead, but sinking in slow decay
Beneath Time’s resistless stroke,

Round which a luxuriant Ivy had grown,

And wreathed it with verdure no longer its own ?

Perchance thou hast seen this sight, and then,

As I at thy years might do,

Passed carelessly by, nor turned again
That scathed wreck to view ;

But now I can draw from that mouldering tree
Thoughts which are soothing and dear to me.

Oh ! smile not, nor think it a worthless thing,

If it be with instruction fraught;

That which will closest and longest cling,

Is alone worth a serious thought.

Should aught be unlovely, which thus can shed
Grace on the dying, and leaves on the dead?

4

Barton.

Floral Poetry.

I V Y.

Y, chief of trees, it is
Veni coronaberis.

The most worthy is she in town ;

He who says other, says amiss ;

Worthy is she to bear the crown ;

Vent corotiaberis.

Ivy is soft, and meek of speech,

Against all woe she bringeth bliss;

Happy is he that may her reach ;

Veni coronaberis.

Ivy is green, of colour bright,

Of all trees the chief she is;

And that I prove will now be right;

Veni coronaberis.

Ivy, she beareth berries black;

God grant to all of us His bliss !

For then we shall nothing lack;

Veni coronaberis.

Ancient Carol.

Floral Poetry,

TO THE JESSAMINE.

WEET Jessamine ! long may thy elegant flower
Breathe fragrance and solace for me •

And long thy green sprigs overshadow the bower
Devoted to friendship and thee.

The eye that was dazzled where Lilies and Roses
Their brilliant assemblage displayed,

With grateful delight on thy verdure reposes,

A tranquil and delicate shade.

But ah ! what dejection that foliage expresses,
Which pensively droops on her breast!

The dew of the evening has laden her tresses,
And stands like a tear on her crest.

I’ll watch by thy side through the gloom of the night,
Impatient till morning appears :

No charm can awaken this.heart to delight,

My Jessamine, while thou art in tears.

But soon will the shadows of night be withdrawn,

Which ever in mercy are given;

And thou shalt be cheered by the light of the morn,
And fanned by the breezes of heaven.

And still may thy tranquil and delicate shade
Yield fragrance and solace to me;

For though all the flowers in my garden should fade,
My heart will repose upon thee.

Miss Jane Taylor.

ft

130

Floral Poetry.

TO A JASMINE-TREE.

GROWING IN THE COURT OF HAWORTH CASTLE.

]M[Y slight and slender Jasmine-tree,

AOA That bloomest on my Border tower,

Thou art more dearly loved by me,

Than all the wealth of fairy bower.

I ask not, while I near thee dwell,

Arabia’s spice or Syria’s rose;

Thy bright festoons more freshly smell,

Thy virgin white more freshly glows.

My mild and winsome Jasmine-tree,

That climbest up the dark-grey wall,

Thy tiny flow’rets seem in glee,

Like silver spray-drops down to fall:

Say, did they from their leaves thus peep,
When mailed moss-troopers rode the hill,

When helmed wardens paced the keep,

And bugles blew for Belted Will ?

My free and feathery Jasmine-tree,

Within the fragrance of thy breath,

Yon dungeon grated to its key,

And the chained captive pined for death.

On Border fray, on feudal crime,

I dream not while I gaze on thee;

The chieftains of that stern old time
Could ne’er have loved a Jasmine-tree.

Lord Morpeth.

•SP

Floral Poetry .

*3 l

THE JASMINE.

’f WAS midnight—through the lattice wreathed

A With Woodbine, many a perfume breathed
From plants that wake when others sleep ;

From timid Jasmine buds that keep
Their odour to themselves all day ;

But when the sunlight dies away,

Let the delicious secret out
To every breeze that roams about.

Moore.

4

Floral Poetry.

THE LAURUSTINUS.

AIR tree of Winter ! fresh and flowering,
When all around is dead and dry ;

Whose ruby buds, though storms are louring,
Spread their white blossoms to the sky :
Green are thy leaves, more purely green
Through every changing period seen ;

And when the gaudy months are past,

Thy loveliest season is the last.

Be thou an emblem—thus unfolding
The history of that maiden’s mind,

Whose eye, these humble lines beholding,

In them her future lot may find :

Through life’s mutations may she be
A modest evergreen like thee :

Though blessed in youth, in age more blessed,

Still be her latest days the best.

Montgomery.

SWEET LAVENDER.

S WEET Lavender ! I love thy flower
Of meek and modest blue,

Which meets the morn and evening hour,
The storm, the sunshine, and the shower,
And changeth not its hue.

In cottage-maid’s parterre thou’rt seen
In simple touching grace :

And in the garden of the queen,

Midst costly plants and blossoms sheen,
Thou also hast a place.

Floral Poetry.

*33

'The Rose with bright and peerless bloom,

Attracted many eyes :

But while her glories and perfume,

Expire before brief Summer’s doom,

Thy fragrance never dies.

Thou art not like the fickle train
Our adverse fates estrange :

Who in the day of grief and pain
Are found deceitful, light, and vain,

For thou dost never change.

But thou are emblem of the friend,

Who, whatsoe’er our lot,

The balm of faithful love will bend,

And, true and constant, to the end,

May die, but alters not.

Agnes Strickland.

THE LILY.

mHE stream with languid murmur creeps
A In Lumin’s flow’ry vale;

Beneath the dew the Lily weeps,

Slow waving to the gale.

“ Cease, restless gale !” it seems to say,

“ Nor wake me with thy sighing !

The honours of my vernal day
On rapid wings are flying.

“ To-morrow shall the traveller come
Who late beheld me blooming;

His searching eye shall vainly roam
The dreary vale of Lumin.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Floral Poetry.

THE LILY.

Y Y OW withered, perished, seems the form
^ ^ Of yon obscure unsightly root!

Yet from the blight of wintry storm
It hides secure the precious fruit.

The careless eye can find no grace,

No beauty in the scaly folds,

Nor see within the dark embrace
What latent loveliness it holds.

Yet in that bulb, those sapless scales,

The Lily wraps her silver vest,

Till vernal suns and vernal gales

Shall kiss once more her fragrant breast.

Yes, hide beneath the mould’ring heap,
The undelighting slighted thing;
There in the cold earth buried deep,

In silence let it wait the Spring.

Oh ! many a stormy night shall close
In gloom upon the barren earth,
While still in undisturbed repose,
Uninjured lies the future birth.

Floral Poetry.

T 35

And ignorance, with sceptic eye,

Hope’s patient smile shall wondering view;

Or mock her fond credulity,

As her soft tears the spot bedew.

Sweet smile of hope, delicious tear,

The sun, the shower indeed shall come;

The promised verdant shoot appear,

And Nature bid her blossoms bloom.

And thou, O virgin queen of Spring,

Shalt from thy dark and lowly bed,

Bursting thy green sheath’s silken string,

Unveil thy charms, and perfume shed ;

Unfold thy robes of purest white,

Unsullied from their darksome grave,

And thy soft petals’ flowery light,

In the mild breeze unfettered wave.

So faith shall seek the lowly dust,

Where humble sorrow loves to lie,

And bid her thus her hopes intrust,

And watch with patient, cheerful eye ;

And bear the long, cold, wintry night,

And bear her own degraded doom,

And wait till heaven’s reviving light,

Eternal spring ! shall burst the gloom.

Alary Tigkc.

136

Floral Poetry.

THE LILY AND THE ROSE.

T HE nymph must lose her female friend,
If more admired than she —

But where will fierce contention end,

If flowers can disagree?

Within the garden’s peaceful scene
Appeared two lovely foes,

Aspiring to the rank of queen—

The Lily and the Rose.

The Rose soon reddened into rage,

And, swelling with disdain,

Appealed to many a poet’s page
To prove her right to reign.

The Lily’s height bespoke command,

A fair imperial flower;

She seemed designed for Llora’s hand,

The sceptre of her power.

This civil bickering and debate
The goddess chanced to hear,

And flew to save, ere yet too late,

The pride of the parterre.

“ Yours is,” she said, “ the noblest hue,
And yours the statelier mien;

And, till a third surpasses you,

Let each be deemed a queen.”

&

Floral Poetry.

T 37

Thus soothed and reconciled, each seeks
The fairest British fair;

The seat of empire is her cheeks ;

They reign united there.

Cowper.

THE LILY AND CHILD.

YNNOCENT child and snow-white flower!

^ Well are ye paired in your opening hour,

Thus should the pure and the lovely meet,

Stainless with stainless, and sweet with sweet.

White, as those leaves just blown apart,

Are the pliant folds of thy own young heart;

Guilty passion and cankering care
Never have left their traces there.

Artless one ! though thou gazest now
O’er the white blossoms with earnest brow,

Soon will it tire thy childish eye,

Fair as it is, thou wilt throw it by.

Throw it aside in thy weary hour,

Throw to the ground the fair white flower;

Yet, as thy tender years depart,

Keep that white and innocent heart.

Bryant.

S

138 Floral Poetry.

THE LILY.

T HERE is a pale and modest flower
In garb of green arrayed,

That decks the rustic maiden’s bower
And blossoms in the glade :

Though other flowers around me bloom
In gaudy splendour drest,

Filling the air with rich perfume,

I love the Lily best.

I see the Tulip’s gorgeous hue
And Sunflower’s crown of gold :

I see the Rose and Woodbine too
Their scented leaves unfold :

Though they adorn the gay parterre,

I love them not as well
As the drooping Lily, frail and fair,

That grows in shady dell.

Anon.

THE LILY AND THE ROSE.

T HE snowy Lily pressed with heavy rain,

Which fills her cup with showers up to the brink,
The weary stalk no longer can sustain

The head, but low beneath the burden sink.

Or should the virgin Rose her leaves display,

And ope her bosom to the blaze of day,

Down drops her double ruff, and all her charms decay.

Floral Poetry.

Languid and dying seems the purple flower,

Fainting through heat, low hangs her drooping head;
But if revived by a soft falling shower,

Again her lively beauties she doth spread,

And with new pride her silken leaves display;

And while the sun doth now more gently play,

Lays out her swelling bosom to the smiling day.

Giles Fletcher.

I SEND THE LILIES GIVEN TO ME.

V SEND the Lilies given to me,

A Though, long before thy hand they touch,
I know that they must withered be ;

But yet reject them not as such :

For I have cherished them as dear,

Because they yet may meet thine eye,

And guide thy soul to mine even here,

When thou behold’st them drooping nigh,
And know’st them gathered by the Rhine,
And offered from my heart to thine !

The river nobly foams and flows,

The charm of this enchanted ground,

And all its thousand turns disclose
Some fresher beauty varying round;

The haughtiest breast its wish might bound,
Through life to dwell delighted here ;

Nor could on earth a spot be found
To nature and to me so dear.

Could thy dear eyes, in following mine,

Still sweeten more these banks of Rhine ?

Byron.

Floral Poetry.

THE LILY OF THE VALLEY.

F AIR flower, that, lapt in lowly glade,

Dost hide beneath the greenwood shade,
Than whom the vernal gale
None fairer wakes, on bank or spray,

Our England’s Lily of the May,

Our Lily of the Vale !

Art thou that “ Lily of the field,”

Which, when the Saviour sought to shield
The heart from blank despair,

He showed to our mistrustful kind,

An emblem of the thoughtful mind,

Of God’s paternal care?

Not this, I trow; for brighter shine
To the warm skies of Palestine
Those children of the East:

There, when mild Autumn’s earlv rain
Descends on parched Esdrela’s plain
And Tabor’s oak-girt crest,

More frequent than the host of night,

Those earth-born stars, as sages write,

Their brilliant discs unfold;

Lit symbol of imperial state,

Their sceptre-seeming forms elate,

And crowns of burnished gold.

But not the less, sweet spring-tide’s flower,
Dost thou display the Maker’s power,

His skill and handiwork ;

Floral Poetry.

Our western valleys’ humbler child,

Where, in green nook of woodland wild,

Thy modest blossoms lurk.

What though nor care nor art be thine,

The loom to ply, the thread to twine,

Yet, born to bloom and fade,

Thee to a lovelier robe arrays,

Than, e’en in Israel’s brightest days,

Her wealthiest kings arrayed.

Of thy twin-leaves the embowered screen,
Which wraps thee in thy shroud of green,
Thy Eden-breathing smell;

Thy arched and purple-vested stem,

Whence pendent many a pearly gem,
Displays a milk-white bell;

Instinct with life thy fibrous root,

Which sends from earth the ascending shoot,
As rising from the dead,

And fills thy veins with verdant juice,
Charged thy fair blossoms to produce,

And berries scarlet red;

The triple cell, the twofold seed,

A ceaseless treasure-house decreed,

Whence aye thy race may grow,

As from creation they have grown,

While Spring shall weave her flowery crown,

Or vernal breezes blow.

142

Floral Poetry.

Who forms thee thus, with unseen hand?
Who at creation gave command,

And willed thee thus to be ;

And keeps thee still in being, through
Age after age revolving ? Who
But the great God is He ?

Omnipotent, to work His will;

Wise, who contrives each part to fill
The post to each assigned;

Still provident, with sleepless care,

To keep ; to make thee sweet and fair,

For man’s enjoyment—kind !

“ There is no God,” the senseless say : —

“ O God ! why cast’st thou us away ?”

Of feeble faith and frail,

The mourner breathes his anxious thought ;
By thee a better lesson taught,

Sweet Lily of the Vale !

Yes, He who made and fosters thee,

In reason’s eye perforce must be
Of majesty divine ;

Nor deems she that His guardian care
Will He in man’s support forbear,

Who thus provides for thine.

Bishop Mant.

Floral Poetry .

T 43

TO THE WHITE WATER-LILY.

H YMPH of the slow, deep, silvery stream,
In queen-like splendour drest,

How sweetly to the orient beam
Thou op’st thy spotless breast.

Pure through the golden hours of day
Thy beauty courts the light;

But, cautious, wrapt in close array,

Thou shield’st it from the night.

But when returned, the god of day
The fields of ether warms,

Sweet flower! thou spring’st to hail his ray,
Beaming in all thy charms.

Nymph of the stream, how bright, how fair,
Thy pearly petals shine !

Not robes that eastern monarchs wear
Display such charms as thine.

Then bloom, sweet flower! and long preside
Majestic o’er the stream;

The rustic’s joy, the florist’s pride,

The poet’s darling theme.

Thomas Gillet.

144

Floral Poetry.

LILIES OF THE VALLEY.

Y OU dream not, as the soft wind stirs
Those little fairy bells,

How to my heart sad pleasure comes,
Each cup a story tells.

They bring before my eyes a form
As fragile and as sweet;

I seem again to hear the fall
Of her light tripping feet.

Once more, as in the olden days,

Her small hand clasped in mine,

I wander through cool mossy paths
Beneath the fragrant pine;

Around that fair young head I bind
Wreaths of the fragrant flowers ;

And silently we watch the stars,

And pass away glad hours.

The morning dawn, the sultry noon,

The hours of calm midnight,

Still found us ever side by side,

Still found my flower bright.

Trembling, I gaze in those deep eyes,

So full of earnest love ;

No taint of earth, as years passed on,
Could stain my snowy dove.

Floral Poetry.

T 45

Whence came the spell, which ever seemed
To hold each passer-by?

Was it a look of heaven they read,

On lip, and brow, and eye ?

Oh, let me kneel beside this cross,

Beneath the Hawthorn tree;

And say, with heart of gratitude,

“ My child, ’tis well with thee ! ”

Agnes 7i. Howell.

THE LILY OF THE VALLEY.

mo the curious eye
A A little monitor presents her page
Of choice instruction, with her snowy bells,

The Lily of the Yale. She nor affects
The public walk, nor gaze of mid-day sun :

She to no state or dignity aspires,

But silent and alone puts on her suit,

And sheds a lasting perfume, but for which
We had not known there was a thing so sweet
Hid in the gloomy shade. So, when the blast
Her sister tribes confounds, and to the earth
Stoops their high heads that vainly were exposed,

She feels it not, but flourishes anew,

Still sheltered and secure. And as the storm,

That makes the high Elm couch, and rends the Oak,
The humble Lily spares,—a thousand blows
That shake the lofty monarch on his throne,

We lesser folks feel not. Keen are the pains
Advancement often brings. To be secure,

Be humble; to be happy, be content.

James Hurdis.

146

Floral Poetry.

THE STAR AND THE WATER-LILY.

J^XHE Sun stepped down from his golden throne,
* And lay in the silent sea,

And the Lily had folded her satin leaves,

For a sleepy thing was she :

What is the Lily dreaming of?

Why crisp the waters blue ?

See, see, she is lifting her varnished lid !

Her white leaves are glistening through !

The Rose is cooling his burning cheek
In the lap of the breathless tide ;

The Lily hath sisters fresh and fair,

That would lie by the Rose’s side :

He would love her better than all the rest;

And he would be fond and true;

But the Lily unfolded her weary lids,

And looked at the sky so blue.

“ Remember, remember, thou silly one,

How fast will thy Summer glide,

And wilt thou wither a virgin pale,

Or flourish a blooming bride ? ”

“ Oh, the Rose is old, and thorny and cold,

And he lives on earth,” said she ;

“ But the Star is fair, and he lives in the air,

And he shall my bridegroom be.”

“But what if the stormy cloud should come,

And ruffle the silver sea?

Floral Poetry.

-if

i47

Would he turn his eye from the distant sky,

To smile on a thing like thee ?

Oh no, fair Lily, he will not send
One ray from his far-off throne ;>

The winds shall blow and the waves shall flow,

And thou wilt be left alone.

“ There is not a leaf on the mountain-top,

Nor a drop of evening dew,

Nor a golden sand on the sparkling shore,

Nor a pearl in the waters blue,

That he has not cheered by his fickle smile,

And warmed with his faithless beam—

And will he be true to a pallid flower,

That floats on the quiet stream ?”

Alas for the Idly ! she would not heed,

But turned to the skies afar,

And bared her breast to the trembling ray
That shot from the rising star.

The cloud came over the darkened sky,

And over the waters wide ;

She looked in vain through the beating rain,

And sank in the stormy tide.

O. IV. Holmes.

148

Floral Poetry.

MYRTLE OFFERING,

fbunm to Terms.

ODDESS ! I do love a girl
Ruby-lipt, and toothed with pearl ?

If so be I may but prove
Lucky in this Maid I love ;

I will promise there shall be
Myrtles offered up to Thee.

Herrick.

THE MYRTLE BOUGH.

S TILL green, along our sunny shore,
The flowering Myrtle waves,

As when its fragrant boughs of yore

Were offered on the graves-

The graves, wherein our mighty men
Had rest, unviolated then.

Still green it waves! as when the hearth
Was sacred through the land ;

And fearless was the banquet’s mirth,

And free the minstrel’s hand ;

And guests, with shining Myrtle crowned,
Sent the wreathed lyre and wine-cup round.

Still green ! as when on holy ground
The tyrant’s blood was poured :

Forget ye not what garlands bound
The young deliverer’s sword !

'Though earth may shroud Harmodius now,
We still have sword and Myrtle bough !

Mrs. Hemans.

Floral Poetry ,

149

TO THE NARCISSUS.

RISE, and speak thy sorrows, Echo, rise;

Here, by this fountain, where thy love did pine.
Whose memory lives fresh to vulgar fame,
Shrined in this yellow flower, that bears his name

ECHO.

His name revives and lifts me up from earth; —

See, see, the mourning fount, whose springs weep yet
Th’ untimely fate of that too beauteous boy,

That trophy of selfdove, and spoil of nature,

Who (now transformed into this drooping flower)
Hangs the repentant head back from the stream;

As if it wished — would I had never looked
In such a flattering mirror ! Oh, Narcissus !

Thou that was once (and yet art) my Narcissus.

Had Echo but been private with thy thoughts,

She would have dropt away herself in tears,

Till she had all turned waste, that in her
(As in a true glass) thou might’st have gazed,

And seen thy beauties by more kind reflection.

Rut selfdove never yet could look on truth,

But with bleared beams ; slick flattery and she
Are twin-born sisters, and do mix their eyes,

As if you sever one, the other dies.

Why did the gods give thee a heavenly form,

And earthly thoughts to make thee proud of it ?

Why do I ask? ’Tis now the known disease
That Beauty hath, to bear too deep a sense
Of her own self-conceived excellence.

Floral Poetry.

Oh! hadst thou known the worth of Heaven’s rich gift,
Thou would’st have turned it to a truer use,

And not (with starved and covetous ignorance)

Pined in continual eyeing that bright gem,

The glance whereof to others had been more
Than to thy famished mind the wide world’s store.

Ben Jonson.

THE N ARCISSU S.

Y_Y ERE young Narcissus o’er the fountain stood,
And viewed his image in the crystal flood;
The crystal flood reflects his lovely charms,

And the pleased image strives to meet his arms.

No nymph his inexperienced breast subdued,

Echo in vain the flying boy pursued.

Himself alone the foolish youth admires,

And with fond look the smiling shade desires ;

O’er the smooth lake with fruitless tears he grieves;
His spreading fingers shoot in verdant leaves ;
Through his pale veins green sap now gently flows,
And in a short-lived flower his beauty blows.

Let vain Narcissus warn each female breast,

That beauty’s but a transient good at best;

Like flowers it withers with the advancing year,

And age, like Winter, robs the blooming fair.

&

Gay.

THE NARCISSUS.

HAT first inspired a bard of old to sing
Narcissus pining o’er the untainted spring?

In some delicious ramble he had found
A little space, with boughs all woven round ;

And in the midst of all a clearer pool
Than e’er reflected in its pleasant cool
The blue sky, here and there serenely peeping,
Through tendril wreaths fantastically creeping;

And on the bank a lonely flower he spied,

A meek and forlorn flower, with nought of pride,
Drooping its beauty o’er the watery clearness,

To woo its own sad image into nearness ;

Deaf to light Zephyrus it would not move,

But still would seem to droop, to pine, to love.

So while the poet stood in this sweet spot,

Some fainter gleamings o’er his fancy shot;

Nor was it long ere he had told the tale
Of young Narcissus, and sad Echo’s vale.

Keats.

Floral Poetry.

THE NIGHTINGALE FLOWER.

F AIR flower of silent night !

Unto thy bard an emblem thou should st be
His fount of song in hours of garish light
Is closed, like thee.

But with the vesper hour
Silence and solitude its depths unseal;

Its hidden springs, like thy unfolding flower,

Their life reveal.

Were it not sweeter still
To give imagination holier scope

And deem that thus the future may fulfil
A loftier hope ?

That as thy lovely bloom
Sheds round its perfume at the close of day,

With beauty sweeter from surrounding gloom,

A star-like ray; —

So in life’s dark decline,

When the grave’s shadows are around me cast,

My spirit’s hopes may like thy blossoms shine,
Bright at the last!

And as the grateful scent
Of thy meek flower, the memory of my name ;

Oh ! who could wish for prouder monument,

Or purer fame?

The darkness of the grave
Would wear no gloom appalling to the sight,

Might hope’s fair blossom, like thy floweret, brav
Death’s wintry night;

m

Floral Poetry.

if

Knowing the dawn drew nigh
Of an eternal, though a sunless day,

Whose glorious flowers must bloom immortally,
Nor fear decay !

Bernard Barton. •

THE NIGHTSHADE.

mREAD aside from my starry bloom !

A I am the nurse who feeds the tomb
(The tomb, my child),

With dainties piled,

Until it grows strong as a tempest wild.

Trample not on a virgin flower !

I am the maid of the midnight hour;

I bear sweet sleep
To those who weep,

And lie on their eyelids dark and deep.

Tread not thou on my snaky eyes !

I am the worm that the weary prize,

The Nile’s soft asp,

That they strive to grasp,

And one that a queen has loved to clasp !

Pity me ! I am she whom man

Hath hated since ever the world began ;

I soothe his brain,

In the night of pain,

But at morning he waketh—and all is in vain.

Barry Cornwall.

U

CM

Floral Poetry.

*54

THE ORANGE BOUGH.

H ! bring me one sweet Orange bough,
To fan my cheek, to cool my brow ;
One bough, with pearly blossoms drest,
And bind it, mother, on my breast !

Go, seek the grove along the shore,

Whose odours I must breathe no more—
The grove where every scented tree
♦ Thrills to the deep voice of the sea.

Oh ! Love’s fond sighs, and fervent prayer,
And wild farewell, are lingering there;

Each leaf’s light whisper hath a tone
My faint heart, even in death, would own.

Then bear me thence one bough, to shed
Life’s parting sweetness round my head,

And bind it, mother, on my breast,

When I am laid in lonely rest.

&

Mrs. Ilemans.

Floral Poetry.

TO THE PASSION-FLOWER.

F Superstition’s baneful art
First gave thy mystic name,

Reason, I trust, would steel my heart,
Against its groundless claim.

But if, in fancy’s pensive hour,
By grateful feelings stirred,

Her fond imaginative power
That name at first conferred —

Though lightly truth her flights may prize,
By wild vagary driven,

For once their blameless exercise
May surely be forgiven.

We roam the seas—give new-found isles
Some king’s or conqueror’s name :

We rear on earth triumphant piles
As meeds of earthly fame : —

We soar to heaven; and to outlive
Our life’s contracted span,

Unto the glorious stars we give
The names of mortal man :

Then may not one poor floweret’s bloom
The holier memory share

Of Him who, to avert our doom,
Vouchsafed our sins to bear?

Floral Poetry .

God dwelleth not in temples reared
By work of human hands,

Yet shrines august, by men revered,

Are found in Christian lands.

And may not e’en a simple flower
Proclaim His glorious praise,

Whose fiat only had the power
Its form from earth to raise?

Then freely let thy blossom ope
Its beauties—to recall
A scene which bids the humble hope
In Him who died for all !

Bernard Barton.

PRIDE AND TPIE POPPIES.

“ 10JE little Red-caps are among the Corn,
Merrily dancing at early morn;

We know that the Farmer hates to see
Our saucy red faces, but here are we!

“ We pay no price for our Summer coats,
lake those slavish creatures, Barley and Oats ;
We don’t choose to be ground and eat
Like our heavy-head neighbour, Gaffer Wheat.

“ Who dare thrash us, we should like to know ?
Grind us, and bag us, and use us so?

Let meaner and shabbier things than we
So stupidly bend to utility !”

Floral Poetry.

T 57

So said little Red-cap, and all the rout
Of the Poppy clan set up a mighty shout;

Mighty for them, but, if you had heard,

You had thought it the cry of a tiny bird.

So the Poppy-folk flaunted it over the field ;

In pride of grandeur they nodded and reeled,

And shook out their jackets, till nought was seen
But a wide, wide shimmer of scarlet and green.

The Blue-bottle sat on her downy stalk,

Quietly smiling at all their talk ;

The Marigold still spread her rays to the sun,

And the purple Vetch climbed up to peep at the fun.

The homely Corn-cockle cared nothing, not she,

For the arrogance, bluster, and poor vanity

Of the proud Poppy-tribe, but she flourished and grew,

Content with herself and her plain purple hue.

The sun went down, and rose bright on the morrow,
To some bringing joy, and to others e’en sorrow,

But blithe was the rich rosy Farmer that morn
When he went with his reapers among the corn.

He trotted along, and he cracked his joke,

And chatted and laughed with the harvest-folk ;

For the weather was settled, barometer high,

And heavy crops gladdened his practised eye.

Floral Poetry.

158

“We’ll cut this Barley to-day,” quoth he,

As he tied his white pony under a tree,

“Next the upland Wheat, and then the Oats;”

How the Poppies shook in their scarlet coats !

Ay, shook with laughter, not fear, for they
Never dreamed they too should be swept away,

And their laughter was spite, to think that all
Their “useful” neighbours were doomed to fall.

They swelled and bustled with such an air,

The corn-fields quite in commotion were,

And the Farmer cried, glancing across the grain,

“ How these rascally weeds have come up again ! ”

“ Pla ! ha !” laughed the Red-caps, “ Ha ! ha ! what a fuss
Must the poor weeds be in! how they’re envying us!”
But their mirth was cut short by the sturdy strokes
They speedily met from the harvest-folks.

And when low on earth each stem was laid,

And the round moon looked on the havoc made,

A Blue-bottle propped herself half erect,

And made a short speech—to this effect:—

“ My dying kins-flowers, and fainting friends,

The same dire fate alike attends
Those who in scarlet or blue are dressed,

Then how silly the pride that so late possessed

if

Floral Poetry.

r 59

“ Our friends the Red-caps! how low they lie
Who were lately so pert, so vain, and high!
They sneered at us and our plain array ;

Are we now a whit more humble than they ?

“ They scorned our neighbours the goodly Corn
Was the butt of their merriment eve and morn,
They lived on its land, from its bounty fed,

But a word of thanks they never have said.

“ And which is the worthiest now, I pray ?

Have ye not learned enough to-day ?

Is not the Corn sheafed up with care, .

And are not the Poppies left dying there?

“ The Corn will be carried, and garnered up
To gladden man’s heart both with loaf and cup
And some of the seed the land now yields
Will be brought again to its native fields,

“ And grow, and ripen, and wave next year
As richly as this hath ripened here ;

And we poor weeds, though needed not,
Perchance may spring up on this very spot.

“ But let us be thankful, and humble too ;

Not proud and vain of a gaudy hue;

Ever remembering, though meanly drest,

That usefulness is of all gifts the best.”

L. A. Twain Icy.

&

Floral Poetry.

TO PRIMROSES

FILLED WITH MORNING DEW.

W HY do ye weep, sweet babes? Can tears
Speak grief in you,

Who were but born
Just as the modest morn
Teemed her refreshing dew?

Alas ! ye have not known that shower
That mars a flower;

Nor felt the unkind
Breath of a blasting wind;

Nor are ye worn with years;

Or warped as we,

Who think it strange to see
Such pretty flowers, like to orphans young,

Speaking by tears before ye have a tongue.

Speak, whimpering younglings, and make known
The reason why

Ye droop and weep.

Is it for want of sleep,

Or childish lullaby?

Or that ye have not seen as yet
The Violet ?

Or brought a kiss

From that sweetheart to this ?

No, no ; this sorrow shown
By your tears shed,

Would have this lecture read ;

That things of greatest, so of meanest worth,
Conceived with grief are, and with tears brought forth.

m

PRIMROSE.

ISarlg IDautlj.

YWY Y dearest, mark how green the groves,

AOA -phe Primrose banks how fair !

The balmy gales awake the flowers,

And wave thy lovely hair.

These wild-wood flowers I’ve pulled to deck
That spotless breast of thine ;

The courtier’s gems may witness love,

But ’tis not love like mine !

Burns.

TO A PRIMROSE.

\ QKELCOME, pale Primrose starting up between
" * Dead matted leaves of Oak and Ash, that strew
The every lawn, the wood and meadow through,

’Mid creeping Moss and Ivy’s darker green.

How much thy presence beautifies the ground !

How sweet thy modest unaffected pride

Glows on the sunny bank and wood’s warm side !

And where thy fairy flowers in groups are found,

The school-boy roams enchantedly along,

Plucking the fairest with a rude delight;

While the meek shepherd stays his simple song
To gaze a moment on the pleasing sight,

O’erjoyed to see the flowers that truly bring
The welcome news of sweet returning Spring.

Clare.

& -:-—- -4

X

Floral Poetry.

TO AN EARLY PRIMROSE.

M ILD offspring of a dark and sullen sire !

Whose modest form, so delicately fine,

Was nursed in whirling storms,

And cradled in the wind.

Thee, when young Spring first questioned Winter’s sway,
And dared the sturdy blusterer to the fight—

Thee on this bank he threw,

To mark his victory.

In this low vale, the promise of the year,

Serene thou openest to the nipping gale,

Unnoticed and alone,

Thy tender elegance.

So virtue blooms, brought forth amid the storms
Of chill adversity, in some lone walk
Of life she rears her head,

Obscure and unobserved ;

While every bleaching breeze that on her blows,
Chastens her spotless purity of breast,

And hardens her to bear
Serene the ills of life.

II. K. White.

Floral Poetry.

163

THE PRIMROSE.

JHTIHE Sun declines; his parting ray
^ Shall bear the cheerful light away,
And on the landscape close ;

Then will I seek the lonely vale,

Where sober evening’s Primrose pale
To greet the night-star blows.

Soft, melancholy bloom, to thee
I turn with conscious sympathy !

Like thee my hour is come,

When lengthening shadows slowly fade,
Till, lost in universal shade,

They sink beneath the tomb.

By thee I’ll sit and inly muse;

What are the charms in life we lose
When time demands our breath?

Alas ! the load of lengthened age
Has little can our wish engage,

Or point the shaft of death.

No; ’tis alone the pang to part

With those we love that rends the heart;

That agony to save,

Some nameless cause in nature strives.
Like thee, in shades our hope revives,
And blossoms in the grave.

Mrs. Hunter.

164 Floral Poetry.

THE PRIMROSE.

Y SAW it in my evening walk

T

A A little lonely flower—

Under a hollow bank it grew
Deep in a mossy bower.

An Oak’s gnarled root, to roof the cave,
With Gothic fret-work sprung,

Where jewelled Fern, and Arum leaves,
And Ivy garlands hung.

And close beneath came sparkling out,
From an old tree’s fallen shell,

A little rill, that dipt about
The lady in her cell.

And there, methought, with bashful pride,
She seemed to sit and look
On her own maiden loveliness
Pale imaged in the brook.

No other flower, no rival grew
Beside my pensive maid,

She dwelt alone, a cloistered nun,

In solitude and shade.

No sunbeam on that fairy pool
Darted its dazzling light——

Only, methought, some clear, cold star

Might tremble there at night.

Floral Poetry.

No ruffling wind could reach her there—
No eye, methought, but mine,

Or the young lambs’ that came to drink,
Had spied her secret shrine.

And there was pleasantness to me
In such belief—cold eyes
That slight dear nature’s loveliness,
Profane her mysteries.

Long time I looked, and lingered there,
Absorbed in still delight,

My spirits drank deep quietness
In with that quiet sight.

Caroline Southey.

PRIMROSE,

SK me why I send you here
^ * This firstling of the infant year ;

Ask me why I send to you

This Primrose all bepearled with dew ;

I straight will whisper in your ears,

The sweets of love are washed with tears.

Ask me why this Flower doth show
So yellow, green, and sickly too ;

Ask me why the stalk is weak,

And bending, yet it doth not break
I must tell you, these discover
What doubts and fears are in a lover.

Thomas Carcw.

k*

-4

i66

Floral Poetry.

THE PRIMROSE OF THE ROCK.

A ROCK there is whose lonely front
The passing traveller slights ;

Yet there the glow-worms hang their lamps,
Like stars, at various heights;

And one coy Primrose to that rock
The vernal breeze invites.

What hideous warfare hath been waged,
What kingdoms overthrown,

Since first I spied that Primrose tuft
And marked it for my own ;

A lasting link in nature’s chain
From highest heaven let down.

■ The flowers, still faithful to the stems,
Their fellowship renew;

The stems are faithful to the root,

That worketh out of view ;

And to the rock the root adheres
In every fibre true.

Close clings to earth the living rock,
Though threatening still to fall;

The earth is constant to her sphere ;

And God upholds them all:

So blooms this lonely plant, nor dreads
Her annual funeral.

Here closed the meditative strain ;

But air breathed soft that day,

Floral Poetry.

167

The hoary mountain-heights were cheered,
The sunny vale looked gay;

And to the Primrose of the rock
I gave this after-lay.

I sang—Let myriads of bright flowers,

Like thee, in field and grove,

Revive unenvied ;—mightier far,

Than tremblings that reprove
Our vernal tendencies to hope,

Is God’s redeeming love;

That love which changed—for wan disease,
For sorrow that had bent,

O’er hopeless dust, for withered age—
Their mortal element,

And turned the thistles of a curse
To types beneficent.

Sin-blighted though we are, we too,

The reasoning Sons of Men,

From our oblivious Winter called,

Shall rise, and breathe again;

And in eternal Summer lose
Our threescore years and ten.

To humbleness of heart descends
This prescience from on high,

The faith that elevates the just,

Before and when they die;

And makes each soul a separate heaven,

A court for Deity.

Wordsworth.

i6S

Floral Poetry,

TO THE PRIMROSE.

)T)ALE visitant of balmy Spring,

^ Joy of the new-born year,

That bidd’st young hope new-plume his wing
Soon as thy buds appear :

While o’er the incense-breathing sky
The tepid hours first dare to fly,

And vainly woo the chilling breeze
That, bred in Winter’s frozen lap,

Still struggling chains the lingering sap
Within the widowed trees.

Remote from towns, thy transient life
Is spent in skies more pure;

The suburb smoke, the seat of strife,
Thou canst but ill endure.

Coy rustic! thou art blooming found
Where artless nature’s charms abound,
Sweet neighbour of the chanter rill;
Well pleased to sip the silvery tide,

Or nodding o’er the fountain’s side,
Self-gazing, look thy fill;

Or, on the dingle’s shadowy steep,
The gaudy Furze beneath,

Thy modest beauties sweetly peep,
Thy chaster odours breathe.

Floral Poetry. 169

From luxury we turn aside,

From wealth and ostentatious pride,

With many an emblematic thorn,

Thy humbler mien well pleased to meet;
Like competence in blest retreat,

Thy smiles the Spring adorn.

What though thou boast no splendid hue
Of Flora’s prouder race?

To me more fair art thou to view,

In all thy simple grace :

Thine innocence and beauty meek,

More like my Celestina’s cheek,

Where all the modest virtues play;
Expression beaming from her eye,

In cherub smiles of chastity,

With mild and tempered ray.

Yet treasures lurk within thy lips,

To glad the spoiler bee,

Who not with idle errand sips,

Or wanton vagrancy.

Ah ! blest is he who temperance tries,
Simplicity above disguise,

And shuns the falser gloss of art;

’Tis he extracts a bliss refined,

Congenial to the virtuous mind,

The tender feeling heart.

v

Floral Poetry.

170

Thy smiles young innocence invite,

What time thy lids awake,

In shadowy lane to taste delight,

Or mazy, tangled brake.

The infant troop of rosy hue,

And gay with health, I seem to view,

While pleasure lights their laughing eyes ;

With little hands a wreath combine,

Their fugitive delights entwine,

And boast their fragrant prize.

Ah ! happy breasts, unknown to pain,

I would not spoil your joys;

Nor vainly teach you to complain
Of life’s delusive toys.

Be jocund still, still sport and smile,

Nor dream of woe or future guile;

For soon shall ye, awakened, find
The joys of life’s sad thorny way
But fading flowerets of a day,

Cut down by every wind.

Bidlake.

THE PRIMROSE.

JHTX.HE milk-white blossoms of the Thorn
^ Are waving o’er the pool,

Moved by the wind that breathes along,
So sweetly and so cool.

Floral Poetry.

171

The Hawthorn clusters bloom above,
The Primrose hides below,

And on the lonely passer-by
A modest glance doth throw !

The humble Primrose’ bonnie face
I meet it everywhere ;

Where other flowers disdain to bloom,
It comes and nestles there.

Like God’s own light, on every place
In glory it doth fall;

And where its dwelling-place is made
It straightway hallows all !

The stars are sweet at eventide,

But cold, and far away ;

The clouds are soft in summer-time,
But all unstable they :

The Rose is rich—but pride of place
Is far too high for me ;

God’s simple common things I love—•
My Primrose, such as thee !

I love the fireside of my home,
Because all sympathies,

The feelings fond of every day,
Around its circle rise.

And while admiring all the flowers
That summer suns can give,

Within my heart the Primrose sweet,
In lowly love doth live !

Robert Nicoll.

172

Floral Poetry.

THE EVENING PRIMROSE.

j^CAIR flower, that shunn’st the glare of day,
Yet lov’st to open, meekly bold,

To evening hues of sober grey,

Thy cup of paly gold;

Be thine the offering, owing long,

To thee, and to this pensive hour,

Of the brief tributary song,

Though transient as thy flower.

I love to watch at silent eve

Thy scattered blossoms’ lonely light ;

And have my inmost heart receive
The influence of that sight.

I love, at such an hour, to mark

Their beauty greet the light breeze chill,

And shine, ’mid shadows gathering dark,

The garden’s glory still.

For such, ’tis sweet to think the while,

When cares and griefs the breast invade,

In friendship’s animating smile,

In sorrow’s dark’ning shade.

wtr

Floral Poetry.

i73

Thus it bursts forth like thy pale cup,
Glist’ning amid its dewy tears,

And bears the sinking spirit up,

Amid its chilling fears.

But still more animating far,

If meek religion’s eye may trace,
Even in thy glimm’ring earth-born star,
The holier hope of grace !

The hope that, as thy beauteous bloom
Expands to glad the close of day,

So through the shadows of the tomb
May break forth mercy’s ray.

Bernard Barton.

4

i 74

Floral Poetry.

ROSE.

WILL not have the mad Clytie,

Whose head is turned by the sun;
The Tulip is a courtly quean,

Whom therefore I will shun ;

The Cowslip is a country wench,

The Violet is a nun;—

But I will woo the dainty Rose,

The queen of every one.

The Pea is but a wanton witch,

In too much haste to wed,

And clasps her rings on every hand;

The Wolfsbane I should dread;

Nor will I dreary Rosemarye,

That always mourns the dead;—

But I will woo the dainty Rose,

With her cheeks of tender red.

The Lily is all in white, like a saint,

And so is no mate for me—

And the Daisy’s cheek is tipped with a blush,
She is of such low degree ;

Jasmine is sweet, and has many loves,

And the Broom’s betrothed to the Bee;—
But I will plight with the dainty Rose,

For fairest of all is she !

Hood.

Floral Poetry.

if

175

THE ROSE.

/XO, lovely Rose !

Tell her that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows,

When I resemble her to thee,

How sweet and fair she seems to be.

Tell her that’s young
And shuns to have her graces spied,

That hadst thou sprung
In deserts where no men abide,

Thou must have uncommended died.

Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired ;

Bid her come forth,

Suffer herself to be desired,

And not blush so to be admired.

Then die, that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee;

How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair.

Yet, though thou fade,

From thy dead leaves let fragrance rise ;
And teach the maid

That goodness Time’s rude hand defies;
That virtue lives when beauty dies.

&

Waller.

176 Floral Poetry.

THE LESSON OF A ROSE.

A H ! see, whose fayre thing dost faine to see,

. In springing flowre the image of the day !

Ah ! see the virgin Rose, how sweetly shee
Doth first peepe forth with blushful modestee,

That fairer seems the lesse ye see her May !

Lo ! see soone after how, more bold and free,

Her bared bosome she doth broad display:

1.0 ! see soon after how she fades and falls away !

So passeth, in the passing of a day
Of mortal life, the leafe, the bud, the flowre ;

No more doth flourish, after first decay,

That earst was sought to deck both bed and bowre
Of many a lady and many a paramoure !

Gather therefore the Rose whilest yet is prime,

For soon comes age that will her pride deflowre ;
Gather the Rose of love whilest yet is time,

Whilest loveing thou mayest loved be with equall crime.

Spenser.

THE ROSE.

Of all flowers,

Methinks a Rose is best . . .

It is the very emblem of a maid ;

For when the west wind courts her gently,

How modestly she blows, and paints the sun

With her chaste blushes! When the north comes near her,

Rude and impatient, then, like chastity,

She locks her beauties in her bud again,

And leaves him to base briers.

Beaumont and Fletcher.

ftp

Floral Poetry.

177

THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER.

’TYTIS the last Rose of Summer
Left blooming alone,

All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone ;

No flower of her kindred,

No Rosebud is nigh,

To reflect back her blushes
And give sigh for sigh.

I’ll not leave thee, thou lone one,
To pine on the stem ;

Since the lovely are sleeping,

Go sleep thou with them.

Thus kindly I scatter
Thy leaves o’er the bed,

Where thy mates of the garden
Lie senseless and dead.

So soon may I follow
When friendships decay,

And from love’s shining circle
The gems drop away.

When true hearts lie withered,

And fond ones are flown,

Oh ! who would inhabit
This cold world alone ?

Moore.

m-

z

78

Floral Poetry.

THE ROSES.

Y SAW them once blowing,

* While morning was glowing;

But now are their withered leaves strewed o’er the ground,
For tempests to play on,

For cold worms to prey on,

The shame of the garden that triumphs around.

Their buds which then flourished,

With dew-drops were nourished,

Which turned into pearls as they fell from on high;
Their hues are all banished,

Their fragrance all vanished,

Ere evening a shadow has cast from the sky.

I saw, too, whole races
Of glories and graces

Thus open and blossom, but quickly decay;

And smiling and gladness,

In sorrow and sadness,

Ere life reached its twilight, fade dimly away.

I

Joy’s light-hearted dances,

And melody’s glances,

Are rays of a moment—are dying when born ;

And pleasure’s best dower
Is nought but a flower,

A vanishing dew-drop—a gem of the morn.

Floral Poetry.

179

The bright eye is clouded,

Its brilliancy shrouded,

Our strength disappears, we are helpless and lone;
No reason avails us,

And intellect fails us;

Life’s spirit is wasted, and darkness comes on.

Bowring.

A RED, RED ROSE.

/\ MY luve’s like a red, red Rose,
That’s newly sprung in June :

O my luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly played in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

So deep in luve am I :

And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun :

I will luve thee still, my dear,

While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve !
And fare thee weel awhile !

And I will come again, my luve,
Though it were ten thousand mile.

Burns.

4

Floral Poetry.

$r-

iSo

A SONG OF THE ROSE.

R OSE ! what dost thou here ?

Bridal, royal Rose !

How, ’midst grief and fear,

Canst thou thus disclose

That fervid hue of love which to thy heart-leaf glows ?

Rose ! too much arrayed
For triumphal hours,

Look’st thou through the shade
Of these mortal bowers,

Not to disturb my soul, thou crowned one of all flowers

As an eagle soaring
Through a sunny sky,

As a clarion pouring
Notes of victory,

So dost thou kindle thoughts, for earthly life too high—

Thoughts of rapture, flushing
Youthful poet’s cheek,

Thoughts of glory rushing
Forth in song to break,

But finding the spring-tide of rapid song too weak.

Yet, oh ! festal Rose,

I have seen thee lying
In thy bright repose

Pillowed with the dying,

Thy crimson by the life’s quick blood was flying.

Floral Poetry .

Summer, hope, and love,

O’er that bed of pain,

Meet in thee, yet wove
Too, too frail a claim

In its embracing links the lovely to detain.

Smil’st thou, gorgeous flower ?—

Oh ! within the spells
Of thy beauty’s power
Something dimly dwells,

At variance with a world of sorrows and farewells.

All the soul forth flowing
In that rich perfume,

All the proud life glowing
In that radiant bloom,

Have they no place but here, beneath the o’ershadowing tomb?

Crown’st thou but the daughters
Of our tearful race ?—

Heaven’s own purest waters
Well might bear the trace

Of thy consummate form, melting to softer grace.

Will that clime enfold thee
With immortal air?—

Shall we not behold thee
Bright and deathless there ?

In spirit-lustre clothed, transcendently more fair?

Yes ! my fancy sees thee
In that light disclose,

And its dream thus frees thee
From the mist of woes,

Darkening thine earthly bowers, O bridal, royal Rose!

Mrs. Hemans.

182

Floral Poetry.

THE ROSE AND THE GAUNTLET.

V OW spake the Knight to the peasant girl,

^ “ I tell thee sooth—I am belted Earl;

Fly with me from this garden small,

And thou shall sit in my castle’s hall.

“ Thou shalt have pomp, and wealth, and pleasure,

Joys beyond thy fancy’s measure ;

Here with my sword and horse I stand,

To bear thee away to my distant land.

“ Take, thou fairest! this full-blown Rose,

A token of love that as ripely blows.”

With his glove of steel he plucked the token,

But it fell from his gauntlet crushed and broken.

The maiden exclaimed—“ Thou see’st, Sir Knight,

Thy fingers of iron can only smite ;

And, like the Rose thou hast torn and scattered,

I in thy grasp should be wrecked and shattered.”

She trembled and blushed, and her glances fell;

But she turned from the Knight, and said “Farewell!”
“Not so,” he cried, “will I lose my prize;

I heed not thy words, but I read thine eyes.”

He lifted her up in his grasp of steel,

And he mounted and spurred with furious heel;

But her cry drew forth her hoary sire,

Who snatched his bow from above the fire.

Floral Poetry.

183

Swift from the valley the warrior fled,

Swifter the bolt of the cross-bow sped ;

And the weight that pressed on the fleet-foot horse,
Was the living man, and the woman’s corse.

That morning the Rose was bright of hue :

That morning the maiden was fair to view :

But the evening sun its beauty shed

On the withered leaves, and the maiden dead.

John Sterling.

THOU VIRGIN ROSE.

The married are compared by the poet to the young Rose, which the
lover places in the bosom of his mistress, first stripped of thorns.

mHOU virgin Rose ! whose opening leaves so fair,
^ The dawn has nourished with her balmy dews,
While softest whispers of the morning air

Called forth the blushes of thy vermeil hues ;

That cautious hand, which ctopt thy youthful pride,
Transplants thy honours, where, from hurt secure,
Stript of each thorn offensive to thy side,

Thy nobler part alone shall bloom mature.

Thus thou, a flower, exempt from change of skies, •
By storms and torrents unassailed shall rise,

And scorn the Winter colds, and Summer heats;

A guard more faithful then thy growth shall tend,

By whom thou may’st in tranquil union blend
Eternal beauties with eternal sweets.

From Metastasio.

184

Floral Poetry.

WORSHIP OF THE ROSE-TREE.

AUTHOR of beauty, spirit of power,

^ ^ Thou who didst will that the Rose should be,
Here is the place, and this the hour
To seek thy presence, and bow to thee.

Bright is the world with the sun’s first ray,

Cool is the dew on the soft, green sod ;

The Rose-tree blooms, while the birds sing praise,
And earth gives glory to nature’s God.

Under this beautiful work of thine,

The flowery boughs that are bending o’er
The glistening turf, to thy will divine
I kneel, and its Maker and mine adore.

Thou art around us; the robe of light
Touches the gracefully waving tree;

Turning to jewels the tears of night,

And making the buds unfold to thee.

Thy name is marked in delicate lines,

On flower and leaf that deck the stem ;

Thy care is seen, and thy wisdom shines,

In even the thorn that is guarding them.

Now while the Rose that has burst her cup,

Opens her heart, and freely throws
To me her odours, I offer up

Thanks to the Being who made the Rose.

H. F. Gould.

Floral Poetry.

1S5

THE MOSS-ROSE.

M OSSY Rose on mossy stone,
Flowering ’mid the ruins lone,

I have learnt, beholding thee,

Youth and Age may well agree.

Baby germ of freshest hue,

Out of ruin issuing new ;

Moss a long laborious growth,

And one stalk supporting both.

Thus may still, while fades the past,
Life come forth again as fast;

Happy if the relics sere
Deck a cradle, not a bier.

Tear the garb, the spirit flies,

And the heart, unsheltered, dies;

Kill within the nursling flower,

Scarce the green survives an hour.

Ever thus together live,

And to man a lesson give ;

Moss the work of vanished years,
Rose, that but to-day appears.

Moss, that covers dateless tombs ;

Bud with early sweet that blooms ;
Childhood thus, in happy rest,

Lies on ancient Wisdom’s breast.

Moss and Rose, and Age and Youth,
Flush and Verdure, Hope and Truth,
Yours be peace that knows not strife,
One the root and one the life.

John Sterling.

2 A

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Floral Poetry.

THE MOSS-ROSE.

3 HE Rose arose in Sharon’s vale,

A And bloomed in Eden beauteously ;

It drank the breath of southern gale;

It proved the warmth of Summer sky ;
But o’er thy growth no Summer rose,

But drifted lay the untrodden snows.

The Rose of England, Rose of yore,

In lily and in crimson hue,

Its bloom was dipped in human gore,

And sullied were its leaves to view ;

But thou hast spread amidst the storm,

In stainless purity, thy form.

Sweet innocence ! by mercy fed,

With light and warmth, and shelter meet,
Whilst Winter all his horrors sped
In drifted snow and driving sleet.

Thus have I seen in maiden form
A beauteous nursling of the storm.

Sweet purity ! no grosser breath

Of fervid winds and scorching skies,
Taught thee to spring from mother earth,
And ’midst impurities arise :

But thou hast sprung, a lovely thing,

Nor proved the genial breath of Spring.

Floral Poetry.

187

Sweet messenger ! of triumph due
O’er death in all his Wintry pride;

He cannot quench one living hue,

Which Heaven has destined to abide
Undimmed ’midst nature’s dire decay,

To blossom in eternal day.

I’ll fix thee here beside my heart

To calm its pulse and check its play,

To heal its wounds, and soothe its smart,

And chase each rankling thought away ;

For surely nought of earthly care
May mar its peace when thou art there.

Thomas Gillespie.

THE QUEEN OF THE GARDEN.

(£i)c Rose.

Y F Jove would give the leafy bowers
^ A queen for all their world of flowers,
The Rose would be the choice of Jove,
And reign the queen of every grove.
Sweetest child of weeping morning,

Gem, the vest of earth adorning,

Eye of flowerets, glow of lawns,

Bud of beauty, nursed by dawns ;

Soft the soul of love it breathes,

Cypria’s brow with magic wreathes,

And to the Zephyr’s warm caresses
Diffuses all its verdant tresses,

Till, glowing with the wanton’s play,

It blushes a diviner ray !

Moore.

%

Floral Poetry.

THE ROSE.

J UST like love is yonder Rose :—

Heavenly fragrance round it throws,

Yet tears its dewy leaves disclose,

And in the midst of briers it blows;

Just like love.

Culled to bloom upon the breast,

Since rough thorns the stem invest,

They must be gathered with the rest,

And with it to the heart be prest;

Just like love.

And when rude hands the twin buds sever,

They die, and they shall blossom never ;

Yet the thorns be sharp as ever ;

Just like love.

From Camoens.

THE MOSS-ROSE.

/JO.HE Angel of the Flowers, one day,

A Beneath a Rose-tree sleeping lay ;

That Spirit to whose charge ’tis given
To bathe young buds in dews of heaven 3—
Awaking from his light repose,

The Angel whispered to the Rose :

“ O fondest object of my care,

Still fairest found, where all are fair ;

For the sweet shade thou giv’st to me,

Ask what thou wilt, ’tis granted thee ! ”
“Then,” said the Rose, with deepened glow,
“ On me another grace bestow.”

Floral Poetry.

189

The Spirit paused in silent thought,—

What grace was there that flower had not?

’Twas but a moment — o’er the Rose
A veil of moss the Angel throws,

And, robed in Nature’s simplest weed,

Could there a flower that Rose exceed?

Anon.

THE WILD ROSE.

A BOY espied, in morning light,

A little Rosebud blowing;

’Twas so delicate and bright,

That he came to feast his sight,

And wonder at its growing.

Rosebud, Rosebud, Rosebud red,
Rosebud brightly blowing !

I will gather thee—he cried—

Rosebud brightly blowing !

Then I’ll sting thee, it replied,

And you’ll quickly start aside
With the prickly glowing.

Rosebud, Rosebud, Rosebud red,
Rosebud brightly blowing !

But he plucked it from the plain,

The Rosebud brightly blowing !

It turned and stung him, but in vain—
He regarded not the pain,

Homewards with it going.

Rosebud, Rosebud, Rosebud red,
Rosebud brightly blowing !

Goethe.

Translated by Theodore Martin.

190

Floral Poetry.

THE ROSE-BUD.

'fOjHEN nature tries her finest touch,
* " Waving her vernal wreath,

Mark ye how close she veils her round,
Not to be traced by sight or sound,

Nor soiled by ruder breath?

Whoever saw the earliest Rose
First open her sweet breast?

Or, when the Summer sun goes down,
The first soft star in evening’s crown
Light up her gleaming crest?

Fondly we seek the dawning bloom
On features wan and fair, —

The gazing eye no change can trace,
But look away a little space,

Then turn, and lo ! ’tis there.

But there’s a sweeter flower than e’er
Blushed on the rosy spray—

A brighter star, a richer bloom,

Than e’er did western heaven illume
At close of Summer day.

'Tis love, the last best gift of heaven;

Love gentle, holy, pure :

But tenderer than a dove’s soft eye,
The searching sun, the open sky,

She never could endure.

Floral Poetry.

Even human love will shrink from sight
Here in the coarse, rude earth :

How then should rash intruding glance
Break in upon her sacred trance
Who boasts a heavenly- birth ?

So still and secret is her growth,

Ever the truest heart,

Where deepest strikes her kindly root
For hope or joy, for flower or fruit,

Least known its happy part

God only, and good angels, look
Behind the blissful screen—

As when, triumphant o’er His woes,

The Son of God by moonlight rose,

By all but heaven unseen :

As when the Holy Maid beheld
Her risen Son and Lord :

Thought has not colours half so fair,

That she to paint that hour may dare
In silence best adored.

The gracious dove, that brought from heaven
The earnest of our bliss,

Of many a chosen witness telling,

Of many a happy vision dwelling,

Sings not a note of this.

So, truest image of the Christ,

Old Israel’s long-lost Son,

What time, with sweet forgiving cheer,

He called His conscious brethren near,
Would weep with them alone.

Floral Poetry.

He could not trust his melting soul
But in His Maker’s sight—

Then why should gentle hearts and true
Bare to the rude world’s withering view
Their treasures of delight ?

No; let the dainty Rose awhile
Her bashful fragrance hide—

Rend not her silken veil too soon,

But leave her, in her own soft noon,

To flourish and abide.

Keble.

THE ROSE.

H OW much of memory dwells amidst thy bloom,

Rose ! ever wearing beauty for thy dower!

The bridal-day—the festival—the tomb—

Thou hast thy part in each, thou stateliest flower;

Therefore with thy soft breath come floating by,

A thousand images of love and grief,

Dreams, filled with tokens of mortality,

Deep thoughts of all things beautiful and brief.

Not such thy spells o’er those that hailed thee first
In the clear light of Eden’s golden day;

There thy rich leaves to crimson glory burst,

Linked with no dim remembrance of decay.

Rose ! for the banquet gathered, and the bier ;

Rose ! coloured now by human hope or pain ;

Surely where death is not—nor change nor fear,

Yet may we meet thee, joy’s own flower again !

Mrs. Hemans.

Floral Poetry.

*93

A CHRISTMAS ROSE.

W HEN the days are dark and cloudy

And the year’s wreck strews the earth,
Pure, all around besoiled,

Springs the Christmas Rose to birth.

So when earth’s, wide realms were dark
With sin, and hate, and strife,

Sinless, the Son of God
Came to His earthly life.

Then a Christmas Rose I send thee,

Now Wintry skies are drear,

The pledge of Christ’s abiding
Through all the long New Year.

Rev. Canon Gover.

CUPID AND THE DIAL.

O NE day, young frolic Cupid tried
To scatter Roses o’er the hours,

And on the dial’s face to hide

The course of time with many flowers.

By chance, his rosy wreaths had wound
Upon the hands, and forced them on;
And, when he looked again, he found

The hours had passed, the time was done.

“ Alas !” said Love, and dropped his flowers,

“ I’ve lost my time in idle play ;

The sweeter I would make the hours,

The quicker they are passed away.”

Anon.

2 B

194

Floral Poetry.

THE LAY OF THE ROSE.

‘' Discordance that can accord ;
And accordance to discord.”

The Romaunt of the Rose.

“ See mine, a holy heart,
To high ends set apart —
All unmated, all unmated,
Because so consecrated.

A ROSE once passed within
A garden, April-green,

In her loneness, in her loneness,

And the fairer for that oneness.

A white Rose, delicate,

On a tall bough and straight,

Early comer, April comer,

Never waiting for the Summer ;

Whose pretty gestes did win
South winds to let her in,

In her loneness, in her loneness,

All the fairer for that oneness.

“ For if I wait,” said she,

“ Till times for Roses be,

For the Musk Rose, and the Moss Rose,
Royal Red and Maiden Blush Rose,

“ What glory then for me,

In such a company ?

Roses plenty, Roses plenty,

And one nightingale for twenty !

“ Nay, let me in,” said she,

“ Before the rest are free,

In my loneness, in my loneness,

All the fairer for that oneness.

“ For I would lonely stand,

Uplifting my white hand,

On a mission, on a mission,

To declare the coming vision.

“ Upon which lifted sign,

What worship will be mine !

What addressing, what caressing,

What thanks, and praise, and blessing !

“ A wind-like joy will rush
Through every tree and bush,
Bending softly in affection.

And spontaneous benediction.

“ Insects, that only may
Live in a sun-bright ray,

To my whiteness, to my whiteness,
Shall be drawn, as to a brightness.

“ And every moth and bee
Shall near me reverently,

Wheeling round me, wheeling o’er me,
Coronals ’ of motioned glory.

“ I ween the very skies
Will look down in surprise,

When low on earth they see me,

With my cloudy aspect dreamy.

“ E’en nightingales shall flee
Their woods for love of me,

Singing sadly all the suntide,

Never waiting for the moontide !

Floral Poetry.

“ Three larks shall leave a cloud
To my whiter beauty vowed,
Singing gladly all the moontide,
Never waiting for the suntide.”

So praying did she win
South winds to let her in,

In her loneness, in her loneness,
And the fairer for that oneness.

But out, alas ! for her,

No thing did minister
To her praises, to her praises,

More than might unto a Daisy’s.

No tree nor bush was seen
To boast a perfect green,

Scarcely having, scarcely having
One leaf broad enow for waving.

The little flies did crawl
Along the southern wall,

Faintly shifting, faintly shifting,

Wings scarce strong enow for lifting.

The nightingale did please
To loiter beyond seas,

Guess him in the happy islands,
Hearing music from the silence.

The lark too high or low,

Did haply miss her so—

With his crest down in the gorses,
And his song in the star-courses !

Only the bee, forsooth,

Came in the place of both—
Doing honour, doing honour,

To the honey-dews upon her.

---

The skies looked coldly down,

As on a royal crown ;

Then, drop by drop, at leisure,

Began to rain for pleasure.

Whereat the earth did seem
To waken from a dream—-
Winter frozen, Winter frozen,

Her anguish eyes unclosing,

Said to the Rose, “ Ha, Snow!

And art thou fallen so ?

Thou who wert enthroned stately
Along my mountains lately.

“ Hullo, thou world-wide snow !

And art thou wasted so ?

With a little bough to catch thee,

And a little bee to watch thee?”

Poor Rose, to be misknown !

Would she had ne’er been blown,

In her loneness, in her loneness,

All the sadder for that oneness.

Some words she tried to say,

Some sigh—ah, well away !

But the passion did o’ercome her,

And the fair frail leaves dropped from her.

Dropped from her, fair and mute,
Close to a poet’s foot,

Who beheld them, smiling lowly,

As at something sad yet holy :

Said, “ Verily and thus,

So chanceth e’er with us,

Poets, ringing sweetest snatches,

While deaf men did keep the watches.

196

Floral Poetry.

“ Saunting to come before
Our own age evermore,

In a loneness, in a loneness,

And the nobler for that oneness.

“ But if alone we be,

Where is our empiry?

And if none can reach our stature,
Who will mate our lofty nature?

“ What bell will yield a tone
Save in the air alone ?

If no brazen clapper bringing,

Who can bear the chimed ringing?

“ What angel but would seem
To sensual eyes glent-dim ?

And without assimilation,

Vain is interpenetration !

“ Alas ! what can we do,

The Rose and poet too,

Who both antedate our mission
In an unprepared season ?

“ Drop, leaf—be silent, song—
Cold things we came among !

We must warm them, we must warm them,
Ere we even hope to charm them.

“ Howbeit”—here his face
Heightened around the place,

So to mark the outward turning
Of his spirit’s inward burning—

“ Something it is to hold
In God’s world’s manifold,

First revealed to creatures’ duty,

A new form of His mild beauty.

“ Whether that form respect
The sense or intellect,

Holy rest in soul or pleasance,

The chief beauty’s sign of presence.

“ Holy in me and thee,

Rose fallen from the tree,

Though the world stand dumb around us.
All unable to expound us.

“ Though none us deign to bless,
Blessed are we natheless ;

Blessed age and consecrated
In that, Rose, we were created !

“ Oh, shame to poet’s lays,

Sung for the dole of praise—
Hoarsely sung upon the highway,

With an ‘ obolum da mihi'!

“ Shame ! shame to poet’s soul,
Pining for such a dole,

When heaven-called to inherit
The high throne of his own spirit !

“ Sit still upon your thrones,

O ye poetic ones !

And if, sooth, the world decry you,
Why, let that world pass by you !

“Ye to yourselves suffice,

Without its flatteries ;
Self-contentedly approve you
Unto Him who sits above you.

“ In prayers that upward mount,
Like to a sunned fount,

And, in gushing back upon you,

Bring the music they have won you !

Floral Poetry.

197

“ In thanks for all the good

Promised things, which shall be given
And sung ever up in heaven !

By poets understood—

For the sound of seraphs moving
Through the hidden depths of loving !

“ For life, so lonely vain,

“ For sights of things away,
Through fissures of the clay-

For death, which breaks the chain-
For this sense of present sweetness,
And this yearning to completeness !”

Elizabeth B. Browning.

THE HALF-BLOWN ROSE.

Y OOK, now, now we esteem the half-blown Rose,

If

The image of thy blush and Summer’s honour ;
Whilst yet her tender bud doth undisclose
That full of beauty time bestows upon her.

No sooner spreads her glories to the air,

But straight her wide-blown pomp comes to decline 3
She then is scorned that late adorned the fair;

So fade the roses of those cheeks of thine;

No April can revive thy withered flowers,

Whose springing grace adorns thy glory now ;

Swift, speedy time, feathered with flying hours,

Dissolves the beauty of the fairest brow :

Then do not thou such treasure waste in vain,

But love now whilst thou may’st be loved again.

Daniel.

Floral Poetry.

ANACREON TO THE ROSE.

IQKHILE we invoke the wreathed Spring,
* ^ Resplendent Rose! to thee we’ll sing,
Resplendent Rose ! the flower of flowers,
Whose breath perfumes Olympus’ bowers,
Whose virgin blush, of chastened dye,
Enchants so much our mortal eye.

Oft has the poet’s magic tongue
The Rose’s fair luxuriance sung ;

And long the Muses, heavenly maids,

Have reared it in their tuneful shades,
When, at the early glance of morn,

It sleeps upon the glittering thorn,

’Tis sweet to dare the tangled fence,

To cull the timid floweret thence,

And wipe, with tender hand, away
The tear that on its blushes lay!

’Tis sweet to hold the infant stems,

Yet dropping with Aurora’s gems,

And fresh inhale the spicy sighs
That from the weeping buds arise.

When revel reigns, when mirth is high,

And Bacchus beams in every eye,

Our rosy fillets scent exhale,

And fill with balm the fainting gale.

Oh ! there is nought in nature bright,
Where Roses do not shade their light;

Floral Poetry.

i 99

Where morning paints the orient skies,

Her fingers burn with roseate dyes ;

And when, at length, with pale decline,

Its florid beauties fade and pine,

Sweet as in youth its balmy breath
Diffuses odour e’en in death !

Oh ! whence could such a plant have sprung ?
Attend—for thus the tale is sung :

When humid from the silvery stream,

Effusing beauty’s warmest beam,

Venus appeared in flushing hues,

Mellowed by ocean’s briny dews ;

When, in the starry courts above,

The pregnant brain of mighty Jove
Disclosed the nymph of azure glance—

The nymph who shakes the martial lance —
Then, then, In strange eventful hour,

The earth produced an infant flower,

Which sprung with blushing tinctures dressed,
And wantoned o’er its parent breast.

The gods beheld this brilliant birth,

And hailed the Rose, the boon of earth,

With nectar drops, a ruby tide,

The sweetly orient buds they dyed,

And bade them bloom, the flowers divine
Of him who sheds the teeming vine ;

And bade them on the spangled thorn
Expand their blossoms to the morn.

Anon.

Floral Poetry.

if

200

AMOUR OF THE ROSE,

©right of tfjc ®fjorns.

V'OUNG Love, rambling through the wood,
^ Found me in my solitude,

Bright with dew and freshly blown
And trembling to the Zephyr’s sighs ;

But as he stopped to gaze upon
The living gem with raptured eyes,

It chanced a bee was busy there,

Searching for its fragrant fair ;

And Cupid, stooping too, to sip,

The angry insect stung his lip;

And, gushing from the ambrosial cell,

One bright drop on my bosom fell.

Weeping, to his mother he
Told the tale of treachery,

And she, her vengeful boy to please,

Strung his bow with captive bees,

But placed upon my slender stem
The poisoned sting she plucked from them ;
And none since that eventful morn
Have found the flower without a thorn.

Anon.

Floral Poetry.

201

TO AN AUTUMN ROSE.

jnPlELL her I love her—love her for those eyes,

A Now soft with feeling, radiant now with mirth,
Which like a lake reflecting Autumn skies,

Reveal two heavens here to us on earth—

The one in which their soulfelt beauty lies,

And that wherein such soulfulness has birth :

Go to my lady ere the season flies,

And the rude Winter comes thy bloom to blast—
Go ! and with all of eloquence thou hast
The burning story of my love discover,

And if the theme should fail, alas ! to move her,
Tell her, when youth’s gay Summer flowers are past,
Like thee my love will blossom to the last!

Hoffman.

Floral Poetry.

THE SENSITIVE PLANT.

PART I.

SENSITIVE Plant in a garden grew,

And the young winds fed it with silver dew;
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light,
And closed them beneath the kisses of niafht.

And the Spring arose on the garden fair,

Like the spirit of love, felt everywhere !

And each flower and herb on earth’s dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its Wintry rest.

The Snowdrop, and then the Violet,

Arose from the ground with warm rain wet;

And their breath was mixed with fresh odour, sent
From the turf, like the voice to the instrument.

Then the pied Wind-flowers, and the Tulip tall,

And Narcissi, the fairest among them all—

Who gaze on their eyes in the stream’s recess,

Till they die of their own dear loveliness !

And the naiad-like Lily of the Vale,

Whom youth makes so fair, and passions so pale,
That the light of its tremulous bells is seen
Through their pavilions of tender green.

And the Hyacinth, purple, and white, and blue,
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music so delicate, soft, and intense,

It was felt like an odour within the sense.

Floral Poetry .

And the Rose, like a nymph to the bath addrest,
Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast,

Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare.

And the wand-like Lily, which lifted up,

As a Maenad, its moonlight-coloured cup,

Till the fiery star, which is its eye,

Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky.

And the Jessamine faint, and the sweet Tuberose,

The sweetest flower for scent that blows !

And all rare blossoms, from every clime,

Grew in that garden in perfect prime.

And on the stream, whose inconstant bosom
Was prankt under boughs of embowering blossom,
With golden and green light, and starting through
Their heaven of many a tangled hue,

Broad Water-lilies lay tremulously,

And starry River-buds glimmered by,

And around them the soft stream did glide and dance
With a motion of sweet sound and radiance.

And the sinuous paths of lawn and moss,

Which led through the garden along and across—
Some open at once to the sun and the breeze,

Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees—

Were all paved with Daisies and delicate bells,

As fair as the fabulous Asphodels,

And flowerets which, drooping as day drooped too,
Fell into pavilions white, purple, and blue,

To roof the glow-worm from the evening dew.

204

Floral Poetry.

And from this undefiled paradise
The flowers (as an infant’s awakening eyes
Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet
Can first lull, and at last must awaken it),

When heaven’s blithe winds had unfolded them,

As mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem,

Shone smiling to heaven, and every one
Shared joy in the light of the gentle sun •

For each one was interpenetrated

With the light and the odour its neighbour shed,

Like young lovers, whom youth and love make dear,
Wrapped and filled by their mutual atmosphere.

But the Sensitive Plant, which could give small fruit
Of the love which it felt from the leaf to the root,
Received more than all, it loved more than ever,
Where none wanted but it, could belong to the giver.

For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower ;
Radiance and odour are not its dower;

It loves, even like Love; its deep heart is full 3
It desires what it has not—the beautiful!

The light winds which, from unsustaining wings,

Shed the music of many murmurings ;

The beams which dart from many a star
Of the flowers whose hues they bear afar.

The plumed insects, swift and free,

Like golden boats on a sunny sea,

Laden with light and odour, which pass
Over the gleam of the living grass.

Floral Poetry.

The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie
Like fire in the flowers till the sun rides high,

Then wander like spirits among the spheres,

Each cloud faint with the fragrance it bears.

The quivering vapours of dim noon-tide,

Which, like a sea, o’er the warm earth glide,

In which every sound, and odour, and beam,

Move as reeds in a single stream.

Each and all like ministering angels were,

Eor the Sensitive Plant sweet joy to bear;

Whilst the lagging hours of the day went by,

Like windless clouds o’er a tender sky.

And when evening descended from heaven above,

And the earth was all rest, and the air was all love,

And delight, though less bright, was far more deep,

And the day’s veil fell from the world of sleep ;

And the beasts and the birds and the insects were drowned
In an ocean of dreams without a sound;

Whose waves never mark, though they ever impress,

The light sand which paves it—consciousness 3

Only overhead the sweet nightingale

Ever sang more sweet as the day might fail,

And snatches of its Elysian chant

Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive Plant.

The Sensitive Plant was the earliest
Upgathered into the bosom of rest 3
A sweet child, weary of its delight,

The feeblest, and yet the favourite,

Cradled within the embrace of night.

206

Floral Poetry.

PART II.

There was a power in this sweet place—

An Eve in this Eden — a ruling grace,

Which to the flowers, did they waken or dream,

Was as God is to the starry scheme.

A lady, the wonder of her kind,

Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind,

Which, dilating, had moulded her mien and motion,
Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean,

Tended the garden from morn to even ;

And the meteors of that sublunar heaven,

Like the lamps of the air when night walks forth,
Laughed round her footsteps up from the earth !

She had no companion of mortal race,

But her tremulous breath and her flushing face
Told, whilst the morn kissed the sleep from her eyes,
That her dreams were less slumber than paradise.

As if some bright spirit for her sweet sake
Had deserted heaven while the stars were awake ;

As if yet around her he lingering were,

Though the veil of daylight concealed him from her.

Her step seemed to pity the grass it prest;

You might hear, by the heaving of her breast,

That the coming and the going of the wind
Brought pleasure there, and left passion behind.

And wherever her airy footstep trod,

Her trailing hair from the grassy sod
Erased its light vestige, with shadowy sweep,

Like a sunny storm o’er the dark green deep.

Floi'al Poetry.

207

I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet
Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet;

I doubt not they felt the spirit that came
From her glowing fingers through all their frame.

She sprinkled bright water from the stream
On those that were faint with the sunny beam ;

And out of the cups of the heavy flowers
She emptied the rain of the thunder showers.

She lifted their heads with her tender hands,

And sustained them with rods and osier bands \

If the flowers had been her own infants, she
Could never have nursed them more tenderly.

And all killing insects and gnawing worms,

And things of obscene and unlovely forms,

She bore in a basket of Indian woof
Into the rough woods far aloof.

In a basket, of grasses and wild flowers full,

The freshest her gentle hands could pull
For the poor banished insects, whose intent,

Although they did ill, was innocent.

But the bee and the beam-like ephemeris,

Whose path is the lightning’s, and the soft moths that kiss
The sweet lips of the flowers, and harm not, did she
Make her attendant angels be.

And many an antenatal tomb,

Where butterflies dream of the life to come,

She left clinging round the smooth and dark
Edge of the odorous cedar bark.

208

Floral Poetry.

This fairest creature, from earliest spring,

Thus moved through the garden, ministering,
All the sweet season of the summer-tide,

And ere the first leaf looked brown—she died.

PART III.

Three days the flowers of the garden fair,

Like stars when the noon is awakened, were;

Or the waves of the Baise, ere, luminous,

She floats up through the smoke of Vesuvius.

And on the fourth, the Sensitive Plant
Felt the sound of the funeral chant,

And the steps of the bearers, heavy and slow, \

And the sobs of the mourners, deep and low,

The weary sound and the heavy breath,

And the silent motions of passing death,

And the smell, cold, oppressive, and dank,

Sent through the pores of the coffin plank.

The dark grass, and the flowers among the grass,

Were bright with tears as the crowds did pass,

From their sighs the wind caught a mournful tone,

And sate in the pines, and gave groan for groan.

The garden, once fair, became cold and foul,
lake the corpse of her who had been its soul :

Which at first was lovely, as if in sleep,

Then slowly changed, till it grew a heap
To make men tremble who never weep.

Swift Summer into the Autumn flowed,

And frost in the mist of the morning rode,

Though the noon-day sun looked clear and bright,

Mocking the spoil of the secret night.

* __ 4

I

Floral Poetry.

20C

The Rose-leaves, like flakes of crimson snow,

Paved the turf and the moss below ;

The Lilies were drooping, and white and wan,

Like the head and the skin of a dying man.

And the Indian plants, of scent and hue,

The sweetest that ever were fed on dew,

Leaf after leaf, day by day,

Were massed into the common clay.

And the leaves, brown, yellow, and grey, and red,

And white with the whiteness of what is dead,

Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind passed ;

Their whistling noise made the birds aghast.

And the gusty winds waked the winged seeds
Out of their birth-place of ugly weeds,

Till they clung round many a sweet flower’s stem,
Which rotted into earth with them.

The water-blooms under the rivulet

Fell from the stalks on which they were set;

And the eddies drove them here and there,

As the winds did those of the upper air.

Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks
Were bent and tangled across the walks;

And the leafless network of parasite bowers
Massed into ruin, and all sweet flowers.

Between the time of the wind and the snow,

All loathliest weeds began to grow,

Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many a speck,
Like the water-snake’s belly and the toad’s back.

2 D

210

Floral Poetry.

The Sensitive Plant, like one forbid,

Wept, and the tears within each lid
Of its folded leaves, which together grew,

Were changed to a blight of frozen glue.

For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon
By the heavy axe of the blast were hewn;

The sap shrank to the root through every pore,

As blood to a heart that will beat no more.

For Winter came : the wind was his whip,

One choppy finger was on his lip ;

He had torn the cataracts from the hills,

And they clanked at his girdle like manacles.

His breath was a chain, which, without a sound,
The earth, and the air, and the water bound ;

He came, fiercely driven in his chariot throne
By the tenfold blasts of the Arctic zone.

Then the weeds, which were forms of living death,
Fled from the frosts to the earth beneath ;

Their decay and sudden flight from frost
Was but like the vanishing of a ghost!

And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant
The moles and the dormice died for want;

And the birds dropped stiff from the frozen air,
And were caught in the branches naked and bare.

First there came down a thawing rain,

And its dull drops froze on the boughs again ;
Then there steamed up a freezing dew,

Which to the drops of the thaw-rain grew;

Floral Poetry.

2 I I

And a northern whirlwind, wandering about
Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child out,

Shook the boughs thus laden and heavy and stiff,

And snapped them off with his rigid griff

When Winter had gone and Spring came back,

The Sensitive Plant was a leafless wreck;

But the mandrakes, and toadstools, and docks, and darnels,
Rose, like the dead, from their buried charnels.

CONCLUSION.

Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that
Which within its boughs like a spirit sat,
Ere its outward form had known decay,
Now felt this change, I cannot say.

Whether that lady’s gentle mind,

No longer with the form combined,
Which scattered love, as stars do light,
Found sadness where it left delight,

I dare not guess; but in this life
Of error, ignorance, and strife,

Where nothing is, but all things seem,
And we the shadows of the dream.

It is a modest creed, and yet
Pleasant, if one considers it,

To own that death itself must be,

Like all the rest, a mockery.

That garden sweet, that lady fair,

And all sweet shapes and odours there,
In truth, have never passed away;

’Tis we, ’tis ours are changed—not they.

Floral Poetry.

For love, and beauty, and delight,

There is no death nor change ; their might
Exceeds our organs, which endure
No light, being themselves obscure.

Shelley.

THE DYING BOY TO THE SLOE BLOSSOM.

B EFORE thy leaves thou com’st once more,
White blossom of the Sloe !

Thy leaves will come as heretofore ;

But this poor heart, its troubles o’er,

Will then lie low.

A month at least before thy time
Thou com’st, pale flower, to me;

For well thou know’st the frosty rime
Will blast me ere my vernal prime,

No more to be.

Why here in Winter ? No storm lours
O’er Nature’s silent shroud !

But blithe larks meet the sunny showers, s
High o’er the doomed untimely flowers
In beauty bowed.

Sweet Violets in the budding grove
Peep where the glad waves run ;

The wren below, the thrush above,

Of bright to-morrow’s joy and love,

Sing to the sun.

And where the Rosedeaf, ever bold,

Hears bees chant hymns to God,

The breeze-bowed palm, mossed o’er with gold,
Smiles o’er the well in Summer cold,

And daisied sod.

Floral Poetry.

213

But thou, pale blossom, thou art come,
And flowers in Winter blow,

To tell me that the worm makes room
For me, her brother, in the tomb,

And thinks me slow.

For as the rainbow of the dawn
Foretells an eve of tears,

A sunbeam on the saddened lawn,

I smile, and weep to be withdrawn
In early years.

Thy leaves will come, but songful Spring
Will see no leaf of mine ;

Her bells will ring, her bridesmaids sing,
When my young leaves are withering
Where no suns shine.

Oh ! might I breathe morn’s dewy breath
When June’s sweet Sabbaths chime !
But, thine before my time, O Death !

I go where no flower blossometh,

Before my time.

Ev’n as the blushes of the morn
Vanish, and long ere noon
The dewdrop dieth on the thorn,

So fair I bloomed ; and was I born
To die as soon?

To love my mother, and to die—

To perish in my bloom !

Is this my sad, brief history?—

A tear dropped from a mother’s eye
Into the tomb.

214

Floral Poetry.

1 ?

He lived and loved—will sorrow say—

By early sorrows tried ;

He smiled, he sighed, he passed away,

His life was but an April day—

He loved, and died !

My mother smiles, then turns away,

But turns away to weep ;

They whisper round me—what they say
I need not hear, for in the clay
I soon must sleep.

Oh, love is sorrow ! sad it is
To be both tried and true;

I ever trembled in my bliss ;

Now there are farewells in a kiss—

They sigh adieu.

But Woodbines flaunt when Blue-bells fade,
Where Don reflects the skies ;

And many a youth in Shirecliffs’ shade
Will ramble where my boyhood played,
Though Alfred dies.

Then panting woods the breeze will feel,
And bowers, as heretofore,

Beneath their load of Roses reel;

But I through Woodbine lanes shall steal
No more, no more.

Well, lay me by my brother’s side,

Where late we stood and wept;

For I was stricken when he died—

I felt the arrow as he sighed—

His last, and slept.

E. Elliott.

Floral Poetry.

THE SHAMROCK.

mHROUGH Erin’s Isle,

^ To sports awhile,

As Love and Valour wandered,

With Wit, the sprite,

Whose quiver bright
A thousand arrows squandered.
Where’er they pass,

A triple grass

Shoots up, with dew-drops streaming,
As softly green
As emerald seen
Through purest crystal gleaming.

Oh the Shamrock, the green, immortal
Shamrock !

Chosen leaf
Of Bard and Chief,

Old Erin’s native Shamrock !

Says Valour, “ See,

They spring for me,

Those leafy gems of morning! ”

Says Love, “ No, no,

For me they grow,

My fragrant path adorning.”

But Wit perceives
The triple leaves,

And cries, “ Oh ! do not sever

A type that blends
Three godlike friends,

Love, Valour, Wit, for ever ! ”

Oh the Shamrock, the green, immortal
Shamrock !

Chosen leaf
Of Bard and Chief,

Old Erin’s native Shamrock !

So firmly fond
May last the bond
They wove that morn together,

And ne’er may fall
One drop of gall
On Wit’s celestial feather.

May Love, as twine
His flowers divine,

Of thorny falsehood weed ’em •

May Valour ne’er
His standard rear
Against the cause of Freedom !

Oh the Shamrock, the green, immortal
Shamrock !

Chosen leaf
Of Bard and Chief,

Old Erin’s native Shamrock !

Moore.

Floral Poetry.

ORIGIN OF THE SNOWDROR

H O fading flowers in Eden grew,

Nor Autumn’s withering spread,
Among the trees, a browner hue,

To show the leaves were dead :

But through the groves and shady dells,
Waving their bright immortal bells,

Were Amaranths and Asphodels,

Undying in a place that knew
A golden age the whole year through.

But when the angel’s fiery bands,
Guarding the eastern gate,

Told of a broken law’s commands,

And agonies that came too late :—
With “ longing, lingering” wish to stay,
And many a fond but vain delay
That could not wile her grief away,

Eve wandered aimless o’er a world
On which the wrath of God was hurled.

Then came the Spring’s capricious smile,
And Summer sunlight warmed the air,
And Autumn’s riches served a while
To hide the curse that lingered there ;
Till o’er the once untroubled sky
Quick driven clouds began to fly,

And moaning Zephyrs ceased to sigh,
When Winter’s storms in fury burst
Upon a world indeed accurst.

Floral Poetry.

217

And when at last the driving snow,

A strange, ill-omened sight,

Came whitening all the plains below :—

To trembling Eve it seemed—affright
With shivering cold and terror bowed—

As if each fleecy vapour cloud
Were falling as a snowy shroud,

To form a close enwrapping pall
For earth’s untimely funeral.

Then all her faith and gladness fled,

And nothing left but blank despair,

Eve madly wished she had been dead,

Or never born a pilgrim there ;

But as she wept, an angel bent
Elis way adown the firmament,

And on a task of mercy sent
He raised her up, and bade her cheer

Her drooping heart, and banish fear :

•

And catching, as he gently spoke,

A flake of falling snow,

He breathed on it, and bade it take
A form and bud and blow :

And ere the flake had reached the earth,

Eve smiled upon the beauteous birth,

That seemed, amid the general dearth
Of living things, a greater prize
Than all the flowers in Paradise.

2 iS

Floral Poetry .

“ This is an earnest, Eve, to thee,”

The glorious angel said,

“ That sun and Summer soon shall be :
And though the leaves seem dead,
Yet once again the smiling Spring,

With wooing winds shall swiftly bring
New life to every sleeping thing,

Until they wake and make the scene
Look fresh again and gaily green.”

The angel’s mission being ended,

Up to heaven he flew,

But where he first descended,

And where he bade the earth adieu,
A ring of Snowdrops formed a posy
Of pallid flowers, whose leaves, unrosy,
Waved like a wingbd argosy, —

Whose climbing masts, above the sea,
Spread fluttering sail and streamer free.

And thus the Snowdrop like a bow
That spans the cloudy sky;

Becomes a symbol whence we know
That brighter days are nigh :

That circling seasons, in a race
That know no lagging lingering pace
Shall each the other nimbly chase,

Till Time’s departing final day
Sweep Snowdrops and the world away.

G. W.

Floral Poetry.

THE SNOWDROP.

F AIR flower ! that ’midst the lingering storms and snows
Of early Winter, and the early smile of Spring,

Rearest thy pensile form—pale fragile thing !

Bending beneath each chilling blast that blows
From the rude icy North—rough Winter throws

Its snows upon thee ; while the Spring impearls,

Within thy cup, its name in softest tints
Of green. Child of two seasons ! who that knows
Thee, loves not to behold thy graceful form
Wooing the sunlight—shrinking from the storm ?

Thou art the herald of a brighter time,

Rearing thy flag on Winter’s dreary way;

Thou com’st, like spirit from a fairer clime,

Predicting joy ’midst death and sad decay.

Rev. Thomas Hincks.

THE SNOWDROP.

S OME deem the Rose the fairest flower
That ever bloomed near lady’s bower,

And some the Lily of the Vale,

Which lends its sweetness to the gale.

But sweet and lovely though they be,

The Snowdrop’s dearer far to me;

And when I seek my lady’s bower,

I’ll search the woods to find that flower.

I’ll gently gather it, in dread

Lest I should hurt that graceful head,

Then bring it to my lady fair,

And leave it in her tender care.

Agnes R. Howell.

Floral Poetry.

TO THE SNOWDROP.

mHOU first-born of the year’s delight,
A Pride of the dewy glade,

In vernal green and virgin white,

Thy vestal robes, arrayed :

’Tis not because thy drooping form
Sinks grateful on its nest,

When chilly shades from gathering storm
Affright thy tender breast;

Nor from yon river islet wild
Beneath the Willow spray,

Where, like the ringlets of a child,

Thou wear’st thy circle gay;

’Tis not for these I love thee dear,—
Thy shy averted smiles
To fancy bode a joyous year,

One of life’s fairy isles.

They twinkle to the wintry moon,

And cheer the ungenial day,

And tell us all will glisten soon
As green and bright as they.

Is there a heart that loves the Spring,
Their witness can refuse ?

Yet mortals doubt, when angels bring
From heaven their Easter news :

When holy maids and matrons speak
Of Christ’s forsaken bed,

And voices, that forbid to seek
The living ’mid the dead ;

Floral Poetry.

22 1

And when they say, “Turn, wandering heart,

Thy Lord is risen indeed,

Let pleasure go, put care apart,

And to His presence speed; ”

We smile in scorn : and yet we know
They early sought the tomb,

Their hearts that now so freshly glow,

Lost in desponding gloom.

They who have sought, nor hope to find,

Wear not so bright a glance :

They who have won their earthly mind,

Less reverently advance.

But where, in gentle spirits, fear
And joy so duly meet,

These sure have seen the angels near,

And kissed the Saviour’s feet.

No ; let the pastor’s thankful eye
Their faltering tale disdain,

As on their lowly couch they lie,

Prisoners of want and pain.

O guide us, when our faithless hearts
From Thee would start aloof,

Where patience her sweet skill imparts
Beneath some cottage roof:

Revive our dying fires to bum
High as her anthems soar,

And of our scholars let us learn
Our own forgotten lore.

4

Keble.

222

Floral Poetry.

TO THE SNOWDROP.

P RETTY firstling of the year !

Herald of the host of flowers !

Hast thou left thy cavern drear,

In the hope of Summer hours ?

Back unto thy earthen bowers,

Back to thy warm world below,

Till the strength of suns and showers
Quell the now relentless snow !

Art still here ?—Alive, and blithe ?

Though the stormy night hath fled,
And the Frost hath passed his scythe
O’er thy small unsheltered head ?

Ah ! some lie amid the dead
(Many a giant stubborn tree,—

Many a plant, its spirits shed),

That were better nursed than thee !

What hath saved thee ? Thou wast not
’Gainst the arrowy Winter furred—
Armed in scale—but all forgot

When the frozen winds were stirred.
Nature, who doth clothe the bird,
Should have hid thee in the earth,

Till the cuckoo’s song was heard,

And the Spring let loose her mirth.

Nature—deep and mystic word,

Mighty mother ! still unknown ;

Thou didst sure the Snowdrop gird
With an armour all thine own !

Floral Poetry.

223

Thou, who send’st it forth alone
To the cold and sullen season

(Like a thought at random thrown),

Sent it thus for some grave reason !

If ’twere but to pierce the mind
With a single gentle thought,

Who shall deem thee harsh or blind ?

Who that thou hast vainly wrought?

Hoard the gentle virtue caught
From the Snowdrop—reader wise !

Good is good, wherever taught,

On the ground or in the skies !

Barry Cornwall.

TO THE SNOWDROP.

L IKE pendent flakes of vegetating snow,

The early herald of the infant year,

Ere yet the adventurous Crocus dares to blow,

Beneath the orchard boughs thy buds appear.

While still the cold north-east ungenial lours,

And scarce the Hazel in the leafless copse
Or Sallows show their downy powdered flowers,

The grass is spangled with thy silver drops.

Yet when those pallid blossoms shall give place
To countless tribes, of richer hue and scent,

Summer’s gay blooms, and Autumn’s yellow race,

I shall thy pale inodorous bells lament.

So journeying onward in life’s varying track,

Ev’n while warm youth its bright illusion lends,

Fond memory often with regret looks back

To childhood’s pleasures, and to infant friends.

Charlotte Smith.

Floral Poetry.

THE SNOWDROP.

HE Snowdrop, Winter’s timid child,

A Awakes to life, bedewed with tears ;
And flings around its fragrance mild,

And where no rival flowerets bloom,

Amid the bare and chilling gloom,

A beauteous gem appears !

All weak and wan, with head inclined,

Its parent breast the drifted snow ;

It trembles while the ruthless wind
Bends its slim form; the tempest lours,

Its emerald eye drops crystal showers
On its cold bed below.

Poor flower! on thee the sunny beam,

No touch of genial warmth bestows ;
Except to thaw the icy stream,

Whose little current purls along
Thy fair and glossy charms among,

And whelms thee as it flows.

The night-breeze tears thy silky dress,
Which decked with silvery lustre shone ;
The morn returns, not thee to bless,

The gaudy Crocus flaunts its pride,

And triumphs where its rival died,
Unsheltered and unknown !

No sunny beam shall gild thy grave,

No bird of pity thee deplore ;

There shall no spreading branches wave ;
For Spring shall all her gems unfold,

And revel ’mid her buds of gold,

When thou art seen no more !

*

Floral Poetry.

225

m

Where’er I find thee, gentle flower,
Thou still art sweet and dear to me;
For I have known the cheerless hour,
Have seen the sunbeams cold and pale,
Have felt the chilling wintry gale,

And wept and shrunk like thee !

Mary Robinson.

TO THE ROUND-LEAFED SUNDEW.

B Y the lone fountain’s secret bed,

Where human footsteps rarely tread,
’Mid the wild moor of silent glen,

The Sundew blooms unseen by men ;
Spreads there her leaf of rosy hue,

A chalice for the morning dew,

And, ere the Summer’s sun can rise,

Drinks the pure waters of the skies.

Would’st thou that thy lot were given
Thus to receive the dews of heaven,

With heart prepared, like this meek flower ?
Come, then, and hail the dawning hour ;

So shall a blessing from on high,

Pure as the rain of Summer’s sky,

Unsullied as the morning dew,

Descend, and all thy soul imbue.

Yes! like the blossoms of the waste
Would we the sky-born waters taste,

To the High Fountain’s sacred spring
The chalice let us humbly bring :

So shall we find the streams of heaven
To him who seeks are freely given ;

The morning and the evening dew
Shall still our failing strength renew.

Anon.

k

4

2 F

Floral Poetry.

if

THE SUN-FLOWER.

Y7X AGLE of flowers ! I see thee stand,

And on the sun’s noon-glory gaze :

With eye like his thy lids expand,

And fringe their disk with golden rays ;
Though fixed on earth, in darkness rooted there,
Light is thine element, thy dwelling air,

Thy prospect heaven.

So would mine eagle-soul descry,

Beyond the path where planets run,

The light of immortality,

The splendour of creation’s sun ;

Though sprung from earth, and hast’ning to the tomb,
In hope a flower of paradise to bloom,

I look to heaven.

Montgomery.

Floral Poetry .

227

ON PLANTING A TULIP-ROOT.

ERE lies a bulb, the child of earth,

Buried alive beneath the clod,

Ere long to spring, by second birth,

A new and nobler work of God.

’Tis said that microscopic power

Might through his swaddling folds descry

The infant image of the flower,

Too exquisite to meet the eye.

This vernal suns and rains will swell,

Till from its dark abode it peep,

Like Venus rising from her shell,

Amidst the spring-tide of the deep.

Two shapely leaves will first unfold ;

Then on a smooth, elastic stem,

The verdant bud shall turn to gold,

And open in a diadem.

Not one of Flora’s brilliant race
A form more perfect can display ;

Art could not feign more simple grace,

Nor Nature take a line away.

Yet, rich as morn, of many a hue,

When flushing clouds through darkness strike,

The Tulip’s petals shine in dew
All beautiful, but none alike.

Montgomery.

28

Floral Poetry.

THE VIOLET.

VIOLET blossomed on the lea,
Half hidden from the eye,

As fair a flower as you might see ;

When there came tripping by
A shepherd maiden fair and young,
Lightly, lightly, o’er the lea ;

Care she knew not, and she sung
Merrily !

“ O were I but the fairest flower,
That blossoms on the lea ;

If only for one little hour,

That she might gather me—
Clasp me in her bonnie breast! ”
Thought the little flower.

“ O that in it I might rest
But an hour!”

Lack-a-day ! Up came the lass,
Heeded not the Violet;

Trod it down into the grass ;

Though it died, ’twas happy yet.
“ Trodden down although I lie,

Yet my death is very sweet—

O the happiness to die
At her feet !”

Goethe.

Translated by Theodore Martin.

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Floral Poetry.

229

THE VIOLET.

(TWEET lowly plant, once more I bend
^ To hail thy presence here,

Like a beloved returning friend,

From absence doubly dear.

Wert thou for ever in our sight,

Might we not love thee less ?

But now thou bringest new delight,

Thou still hast power to bless.

Still doth thy April presence bring
Of April joys a dream,

When life was in its sunny spring—

A fair, unrippled stream.

And still thine exquisite perfume
Is precious as of old,

And still thy modest, tender bloom
It joys me to behold.

It joys and cheers whene’er I see
Pain on earth’s meek ones press,

To think the storm that rends the tree
Scathes not thy lowliness.

And thus may human weakness find,

E’en in thy lowly flower,

An image cheering to the mind
In many a trying hour.

Anon.

&

230

Floral Poetry .

THE VIOLET.

W HY better than the lady Rose
Love I this little flower ?

Because its fragrant leaves are those
I loved in childhood’s hour.

Though many a flower may win my praise,
The Violet has my love ;

I did not pass my childish days
In garden or in grove.

My garden was the window-seat,

Upon whose edge was set
A little vase—the fair, the sweet—-
It was the Violet.

It was my pleasure and my pride;—

How I did watch its growth;

For health and bloom what plans I tried,

And often injured both !

I placed it in the summer shower,

I placed it in the sun ;

And ever at the evening hour,

My work seemed half undone.

The broad leaves spread, the small buds grew,
How slow they seemed to be !

At last there came a tinge of blue,

’Twas worth the world to me !

Floral Poetry.

231

At length the perfume filled the room,

Shed from their purple wreath ;

No flower has now so rich a bloom,

Has now so sweet a breath.

I gathered two or three—they seemed
Such rich gifts to bestow !

So precious in my sight, I deemed
That all must think them so.

Oh ! who is there but would be fain
To be a child once more,

If future years could bring again
All that they brought before ?

My heart’s world has been long o’erthrown ;

It is no more of flowers ;

Their bloom is passed, their breath is flown ;

Yet I recall those hours.

Let Nature spread her loveliest,

By Spring or Summer nurst:

Yet still I love the Violet best,

Because I loved it first.

L. E. Landon.

VIOLETS.

Y YNDER the green hedges after the snow,

^ There do the dear little Violets grow;

Hiding their modest and beautiful heads
Under the Hawthorn in soft mossy beds.

Sweet as the Roses and blue as the sky,

Down there do the dear little Violets lie,

Hiding their heads where they scarce can be seen;—

By the leaves you may know where the Violet hath been.

Moultrie.

232

Floral Poetry.

THE VIOLET.

S WEET Violets, Love’s paradise, that spread

Your gracious odours, which you couched bear
Within your palie faces,

Upon the gentle wing of some calm-breathing wind,
That plays amidst the plain,

If by the favour of propitious stars you gain
Such grace as in my ladie’s bosom place to find,

Be proud to touch those places !

Your honours of the flowrie meads I pray,

You pretty daughters of the earth and sun.

Raleigh.

VIOLETS.—A SONNET.

B EAUTIFUL are you in your lowliness :

Bright in your hues, delicious in your scent,

Lovely your modest blossoms, downward bent,

As shrinking from our gaze, yet prompt to bless
The passer-by with fragrance, and express
How gracefully, though mutely eloquent,

Are unobtrusive worth and meek content,

Rejoicing in their own obscure recess.

Delightful flowerets ! at the voice of Spring
Your buds unfolded to its sunbeams bright;

And, though your blossoms soon shall fade from sight,
Above your lonely birth-place birds shall sing,

And from your clustering leaves the glow-worm fling
The emerald glory of its earth-born light.

Barton.

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Floral Poetry.

233

THE VIOLET.

T HE Violet in her greenwood bower,

Where Birchen boughs with Hazels mingle,
May boast herself the fairest flower
In glen, or copse, or forest dingle.

Though fair her gems of azure hue,

Beneath the dew-drop’s weight reclining,

I’ve seen an eye of lovelier blue,

More sweet through watery lustre shining.

The summer sun that dew shall dry,

Ere yet the day be past its morrow;

No longer in my false love’s eye

Remained the tear of parting sorrow.

Sir Walter Scott.

ON A FADED VIOLET.

T HE odour from the flower is gone

Which, like thy kisses, breathed on me ;
The colour from the flower is flown,

Which glowed of thee, and only thee !

A shrivelled, lifeless, vacant form,

It lies on my abandoned breast,

And mocks the heart, which yet is warm,
With cold and silent rest.

I weep,—my tears revive it not!

I sigh,—it breathes no more on me ;

Its mute and uncomplaining lot
Is such as mine should be.

Shelley.

2 G

234

Floral Poetry.

THE YELLOW VIOLET.

W HEN Beechen buds begin to swell,

And woods the blue-bird’s warble know,
The yellow Violet’s modest bell

Peeps from the last year’s leaves below.

Ere russet fields their green resume,

Sweet flower, I love, in forest bare,

To meet thee when thy faint perfume
Alone is in the virgin air.

Of all her train, the hand of Spring
First plants thee in the watery mould,

And I have seen thee blossoming
Beside the snow-bank’s edges cold.

Thy parent sun, who bade thee view
Pale skies, and chilling moisture sip,

Has bathed thee in his own bright hue,

And streaked with jet thy glowing lip.

Yet slight thy form, and low thy seat,

And earthward bent thy gentle eye,

Unapt the passing view to meet,

When loftier flowers are flaunting nigh.

Oft in the sunless April day,

Thy early smile has stayed my walk,

But midst the gorgeous blooms of May
I passed thee on thy humble stalk.

Floral Poetry.

2 35

So they who climb to wealth forget
The friends in darker fortunes tried;
I copied them — but I regret

That I should ape the ways of pride.

And when again the genial hour
Awakes the painted tribes of light,

I’ll not o’erlook the modest flower

That made the woods of April bright.

Bryant.

THE VIOLET.

S WEETEST little purple flower!

Found most oft by lonely tower,
Or in the woodland, or the vale,
Sending forth thy odorous gale.

Thy lovely form, of deepened hue,

Is bathed in morn and evening dew :

And in return for Nature’s store,

Thy balmy fragrance thou dost pour.

Thou liv’st unseen and quite retired,

By all thy kindred unadmired,

Save the pale Primrose, who like thee,

Lies hidden in obscurity.

So virtue shuns the vulgar gaze,

Nor courts the empty breath of praise ;

But in the solitary glade

Shines forth, in Beauty’s self arrayed.

Emma Prior.

236

Floral Poetry.

TO A TUFT OF EARLY VIOLETS.

(AWEET flowers ! that from your humble beds
Thus prematurely dare to rise,

And trust your unprotected heads
To cold Aquarius’ wat’ry skies ;

Retire, retire ! these tepid airs

Are not the genial brood of May ;
That Sun with light malignant glares,
And flatters only to betray.

Stern Winter’s reign is not yet past—

Lo ! while your buds prepare to blow,

On icy pinions comes the blast,

And nips your root, and lays you low.

Alas, for such ungentle doom !

But I will shield you; and supply
A kindlier soil on which to bloom,

A nobler bed on which to die.

Come then—ere yet the morning ray

Has drunk the dew that gems your crest,
And drawn your balmiest sweets away 3
O come, and grace my Anna’s breast.

Floral Poetry .

-if

237

Ye droop, fond flowers ! But did ye know
What worth, what goodness there reside,

Your cups with loveliest tints would glow,

And spread their leaves with conscious pride.

' 'ii

For there has liberal Nature joined
Her riches to the stores of art,

And added to the vigorous mind,

The soft, the sympathising heart.

Come then—ere yet the morning ray

Bias drunk the dew that gems your crest,

And drawn your balmiest sweets away;

O come, and grace my Anna’s breast.

More blest than me, thus shall ye live
Your little day ; and when ye die,

Sweet flowers ! the grateful Muse shall give
A verse ; the sorrowing maid, a sigh.

While I, alas ! no distant date,

Mix with the dust from whence I came,

Without a friend to weep my fate,

Without a stone to tell my name.

William Gifford.

238

Floral Poetry,

THE VIOLET.

HE forward Violet thus did I chide :

A Sweet thief, whence did’st thou steal thy sweet that smells,
If not from my love’s breath ? The purple pride
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
In my love’s veins thou hast too grossly dyed,

The Lily I condemned for thy hand,

And buds of Marjoram had stolen thy hair:

The Roses fearfully on thorns did stand,

One blushing shame, another white despair;

A third, nor red nor white, had stolen of both,

And to his robbery had annexed thy breath ;

But, for his theft, in spite of all his growth,

A vengeful canker ate him up to death.

More flowers I noted, yet I none could see
But sweet or colour it had stolen from thee.

Shakspere.

THE SCENTLESS VIOLET.

D ECEITFUL plant! from thee no odours rise,
Perfume the air, or scent the mossy glade,
Although thy blossoms wear the modest guise
Of her, the sweetest offspring of the shade.

Yet not like hers, still shunning to be seen,

And by their fragrant breath, alone, betrayed,
Veiled in the vesture of a scantier green,

To every gazer are thy flowers displayed.

Thus Virtue’s garb Hypocrisy may wear,

Kneel as she kneels, or give as she has given ;
But, ah ! no meek, retiring worth is there—

No incense of the heart exhales to Heaven.

C. H. Townsend.

Floral Poetry.

2 39

SONG OF THE VIOLETS.

U NDER the hedge all safe and warm

Sheltered from boisterous wind and storm
We Violets lie :

With each small eye
Closely shut while the cold goes by.

You look at the bank, ’mid the biting frost,

And you sigh and say we are dead and lost :

But, lady, stay
For a sunny day,

And you’ll find us again alive and gay.

On mossy banks, under forest trees,

You’ll find us crowding in days like these :

Purple and blue,

And white ones too,

Peep at the sun and wait for you.

By maids and matrons, by old and young,

By rich and poor our praise is sung :

And the blind man sighs
When his sightless eyes
He turns to the spot where our perfumes rise.

There is not a garden the country through
Where they plant not Violets white and blue :

By princely hall,

And cottage small —

For we’re sought, and cherished, and culled by all.

if

Floral Poetry.

Yet grand parterres, and stiff trimmed beds,

But ill become our modest heads ;

We’d rather run,

In shadow and sun,

O’er the banks where our merry lives first begun.

There, where the Birken bough’s silvery shine
Gleams over the Hawthorn and frail Woodbine,
Moss deep and green,

Lies thick between,

The plots where we Violet-flowers are seen.

And the small gay Celandine’s stars of gold
Rise sparkling beside our purple’s fold :—

Such a regal show
Is rare I trow,

Save on the banks where the Violets grow.

L. A. Twamley.

Floral Poetry. 241

FRAGMENT.

Qffltallsflotoer anti ^tmcgsuckle.

2 H

H ND well the lonely infant knew
^ ^ Recesses where the Wall-flower grew,

And Honeysuckle loved to crawl
Up the low crag and ruined wall.

I deemed such nooks the sweetest shade
The sun in all his round surveyed,

And still I thought that shattered tower
The mightiest work of human power.

Sir Waller Scoll.

Floral Poetry.

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

OW happily, how happily the flowers die away,

Oh ! could we but return to earth as easily as they ;

W Just live a life of sunshine, of innocence and bloom,
Then drop without decrepitude or pain into the tomb.

The gay and glorious creatures ! they neither “ toil nor spin,”
Yet, lo ! what goodly raiment they’re all apparelled in ;

No tears are on their beauty, but dewy gems more bright
Than ever brow of Eastern queen endiademed with light.

The young rejoicing creatures ! their pleasures never pall,

Nor lose in sweet contentment, because so free to all ;

The dew, the showers, the sunshine, the balmy blessed air,

Spend nothing of their freshness, though all may freely share.

The happy, careless creatures ! of time they take no heed,

Nor weary of his creeping, nor tremble at his speed ;

Nor sigh with sick impatience, and wish the light away,

Nor when tis gone, cry dolefully, “ Would God that it were day ! ”

And when their lives are over, they drop away to rest,
Unconscious of the penal doom on holy nature’s breast;

No- pain have they in dying — no shrinking from decay,

Oh ! could we but return to earth as easily as they !

C. Bowles.

PART I.

FLOWERS, WITH THE SENTIMENTS THEY REPRESENT.

JFIofcucrs.

Acacia.

Acacia, Rose or White
Acacia, Yellow
Acanthus
Achillea Millei r olia
Achimenes Cupreata ... 1 ...

Aconite (WolfsbaneJ.

Aconite-leaved Crow'sfoot
Adonis (Pheasant's Eye)
African Marigold

Agnus Castus.

Agrimony .

Allspice ... .

Almond, Common .

Almond, Flowering .

Aloe

Althea Frutex (Syrian Mallow)

Alyssum, Sweet

Amaranth, Globe

Amaranth, Cockscomb

Amaryllis

Ambrosia

American Cowslip

Amethyst

Andromeda

Anemone, Garden

Anemone (Zephyr Flower)

Angelica

Apocynum (Dogsbane)

Apple

Apple, Thorn ...

Apricot Blossom .

Arbor Vitce

Arbutus, or Strawberry Tree

Jlontljs of jTlotuctmt!.

Sentiments.

April—June ...

Do.

Do.

July—September
August

July .

June, July ...

May—J uly ...
September, October...

July .

Summer
July, August
May—July ...

March

March, April

August, September ...
Summer

July .

June

April

August, September ...

Spring .

July

August

April—May ...

March — May
September ...

July, September
May

July, August...

March

May

| September, October...

Friendship ; chaste love.

Elegance.

Secret love.

The fine arts ; artifice.

War.

Such worth is rare.

Misanthropy ; chivalry.

Lustre.

Sad memories ; remembrance.

Vulgar minds.

Coldness ; indifference.

Thankfulness ; gratitude.

Compassion.

Stupidity; indiscretion.

Hope. [sorrow.

Grief; religious superstition; acute
Persuasion.

Worth beyond beauty.

Immortality; unfading love.

Foppery ; affectation ; singularity.
Pride ; splendid beauty.

Love returned.

Divine beauty ; pensiveness.
Admiration.

Self-sacrifice.

Forsaken.

Sickness; expectation.

Inspiration ; magic.

Deceit; falsehood.

Temptation,

Deceitful charms.

Doubt.

Unchanging friendship ; live for me.
Esteem and love.

244

The Language of Flowers.

jnototts.

jJHlontfiS of Jflotocring.

Sentiments.

Arum

May, June ...

Ardour ; zeal.

Asclepias

August, September ...

Cure for the heart-ache.

Ash-leaved Trumpet Flower

July .

Separation.

Ash, Mountain ...

Mav

Prudence ; with me you are safe.

Ash Tree

April, May ...

Grandeur.

Aspen Tree

March

Lamentation.

Asphodel .

July, September

My regrets follow you to the grave.

Aster (China), Double .

July .

I partake your sentiments.

Aster (China), Single .

Do.

I will think of it.

Auricula

April

Painting.

Auricula, Scarlet

Do.

Avarice.

Austurtium

July, September

Splendour.

Azalea ...

May, June ...

Temperance.

Bachelor’s Buttons .

Summer

Celibacy; single blessedness.

Balm

June, July ...

Sympathy.

Balm of Gilead

August

Cure ; relief.

Balsam, Yellow...

uly, August

Impatience.

Barberry

une

Sourness of temoer ; sharpness.

Basil

July, August

Hatred.

Bay Tree

April, May ...

I change but in death ; glory.

Bay (Rose) Rhododendron .

June .

Danger; beware.

Bearded Crepis

Summer

Protection.

Beech Tree

une

Prosperity.

Begonia .

uly, August

Deformity.

Belladonna

une—August

Silence ; hush ; truth.

Bell Flower

uly, September

Constancy.

Betony ...

uly, August

Surprise.

Bilberry ...

May

Treachery.

Bindweed

J uly — September

Insinuation.

Birch

April

Meekness.

Birdsfoot Trefoil

July, August

Revenge.

Bittersweet (Nightshade) .

June, July ...

Truth ; silence ; hush.

Black Poplar ...

March, April

Courage.

Blackthorn

March—May

Difficulty.

Bladder Senna ...

July, August

Frivolous amusements.

Blue-bell

May, June ...

Sorrowful regrets.

Bluebottle (Centaury)

July, August

Delicacy.

Borage ... ... .

J

une — September

Bluntness ; roughness of manners.

Box I ree

April

Stoicism.

Bramble

J

une — August

Lowliness ; envy ; remorse.

Branch of Thorns

Severity ; rigour.

Briar, Sweet

J

une

Poetry ; I wound to heal.

Bridal Rose

All summer ...

Happy love. [Plantagenets.

Broom

J

une

Humility ; neatness ; emblem bf the

Browallia Jamisoni

Do.

Could you bear poverty?

Bryony

May, July ...

Prosperity.

Buckbean

July .

Calm repose.

Bugloss

J

une — August

Falsehood.

Bullace Tree

April

Acidity.

Bulrush

J

une, July ...

Indiscretion ; docility.

Bur, Butter .

April, May ...

Rudeness ; you weary me.

Burdock

July, August

Importunity.

Buttercup (Kingcup) ...

May

Riches ; desire of riches.

Butterfly Orchis

J

une, July ...

Gaiety.

Butterfly Weed

August

Let me go.

Cabbage .

Spring

Profit.

Cacalia

August, September ...

Adulation.

Cactus .

May, June ...

Warmth.

k* ---—-- -4

/

245

The Language of Flowers.

jHaforrs.

fffiontl)S of jFlofomng.

Sentiments.

Calceolaria ... „.

Calla zEthiopica
Calycanthus
Camellia Japonica, Red
Do., do., White
Camomile
Campanula
Canary Grass ...

Candytuft
Canterbury Bell
Capejasmine ...

Cardamme
Cardinal Flower
Carnation, Deep Red ...

Do., Striped

Do., Yellow.

Carolina Syringa
Carrot ...

Catchfly, Red ...

Do., White

Catesby’s Starwort .

Cattleya

Cattleya Pineli ...

Cedar Deodora, or Indian Cedar

Cedar of Lebanon

Celandine

Centaury

Cereus, Creeping .

Champignon (Mushroom)

Chequered Fritillary.

Cherry

Chervil, Garden
Chestnut
Ohickweed
Chicory

China Aster, Double
Do., Single

Chinese Chrysanthemum, Red
Chinese Primrose
Christmas Rose
Chrysanthemum, Red
Chrysanthemum, White
Do., Yellow

Cineraria
Cinquefoil
Circoea ...

Cistus, or Rock Rose

Citron

Clarkia

Clematis ... ... . ...

Clianthus

Clover, Four-leaved ...

Do., Red .

Do., White
Cloves
Cobcea ...

Cockscomb, or Crested Amaranth

Coltsfoot

Columbine

Do., Purple

June, July ...

June

Do.

May

Do.

August
June — August
July

April—June ...
July
August
March

J uly — October
July, August
Do.

Do.

June, July ...
June

May — July ...

Do.

June

All summer ...

Autumn

May

Do.

May, June ...
July, August
' Do.

August

May

May — June ...
June

J une — September

Summer

July

Do.

September—N ovember
March — July
December, January ...
July — September
Do.

July

Do.

June, July ...
July

July, August
June

May—July ...

August

May

All summer ...

Do.

Do.

June

August

June

March, April
June, July ..
June

I offer you my fortune.

Feminine modesty.

Benevolence.

Unpretending excellence.

Perfected loveliness.

Energy in adversity.

Aspiring.

Perseverance.

Architecture.

Acknowledgment; gratitude.

I’m too happy.

Paternal error.

Distinction.

Alas, for my poor heart !

Refusal.

Disdain.

Disappointment.

Do not refuse.

Youthful love.

Betrayed.

After-thought.

Mature charms.

Matronly grace.

Adoration,

Strength ; incorruptible.

Joys to come.

Delicacy.

Modest genius.

Suspicion.

Persecution.

Good education.

Sincerity.

Do me justice.

Rendezvous.

Frugality.

I partake your sentiments.

I will think of it.

Cheerfulness under adversity.

Lasting love.

Relieve my anxiety.

I love.

Truth.

Slighted love.

Always delightful.

Maternal affection.

Spell.

Popular favour.

Ill-natured beauty. [lights me.

The variety of your conversation de-
Poverty.

Worldliness ; self-seeking.

Be mine.

Industry.

1 think of thee.

Dignity.

Gossip.

Foppery ; affectation ; singularity.
Justice shall be done.

Folly.

Resolved to win.

246

The Language of Flowers.

JFIotofW.

ffflontfis of Jllotoeriiig.

S>entiinnils.

Columbine, Red

June.

Anxious and trembling.

Common Cactus, or Indian Fig

Do. .

I burn.

Convolvulus

May—August

Bonds.

Do., Minor

Do.

Night ; repose.

Do., Major

Do.

Extinguished hopes. [affection.

Do., Pink

Corchorus

Do.

Worth sustained by judicious and tender

July .

Impatient of absence.

Coreopsis

September, October...

Always cheerful.

Do., Arkansa

Do.

Love at first sight.

Coriander

June .

Hidden worth ; concealed merit.

Corn

Summer

Riches.

Corn Cockle

June, July ...

Gentility.

Cornel ...

June .

Duration.

Coronilla

Do. .

Success crown your wishes.

Cosmelia Rubra

May

The charm of a blush.

Cowslip .

April, May ...

Pensiveness ; winning grace.

Cowslip, American

Do.

Divine beauty; pensiveness.

Crab Blossom ...

May

Ill nature.

Cranberry

June .

Hardiness.

Creeping Cereus .

July, August...

Horror.

Crepis, Bearded .

Summer

Protection.

Cress

June—August

Stability ; power.

Crocus ...

February

Smiles ; cheerfulness.

Crown Imperial

March

Majesty ; power.

Crowsfoot, Celery-leaved

June—August

Ingratitude.

Crowsfoot, Aconite-leaved

May—July ...

Lustre.

Cuckoo-fruit

May, June ...

Ardour.

Currant

April, May ...

Thy frown will kill me.

Cuscuta

September ... -

Meanness.

Cyclamen

July .

Diffidence.

Cypress .

April, May ...

Death ; despair ; mourning ; sorrow.

Daffodil .

March, April

Regard.

Dahlia ...

July, November

Instability.

Daisy

May — August

Innocence ; beauty ; I will think of it.

Daisy, Michaelmas

October

Farewell.

Daisy, Parti-coloured

Autumn

Beauty.

Dandelion

All year

Rustic oracle ; depart.

Daphne

May

Glory ; immortality.

Daphne Odora.

Do. .

Painting the lily ; sweet to the sweet.

Day Lily

May, July ...

Coquetry

Dead Leaves

Sadness.

Deadly Nightshade

July, August

Falsehood.

Dew Plant

A serenade.

Dianthus

June, July .

Make haste.

Diosma

May, June

Your simple elegance charms me.

Dipladenia Crassinoda

September ...

You are too bold.

Dipteracanthus Spectabilis ...

July .

Fortitude.

Dittany of Crete

Do. .

Birth.

Do., White

June .

Passion.

Dock

July, August

Patience.

Dodder of Thyme

August, September ...

Baseness.

Dogsbane

August

Deceit.

Dogwood, or Cornel Tree

June .

Durability.

Dragon Plant ...

May

Snare ; the Betrayer.

Dried Flax

June

Utility.

Easter Giant .

July .

Patience.

Ebony ...

Do. .

Blackness.

Echites Atropurpurea . 1 .

Do. .

Be warned in time.

The Language of Flowers .

247

jFlofocrs.

fHorttljs of Jllofoering.

Sentiments.

Eglantine (Sweetbriar) .

June, July ...

Poetry ; I wound to heal.

Elder .

June

Zealousness.

Elm .

March

Dignity.

Enchanter’s Nightshade

July, August

Witchcraft; sorcery.

Endive ...

[uly .

Frugality.

Escholzia

July, October

Do not refuse me.

Eupatorium

September, October...

Delay.

Evening Primrose

July—September

Inconstancy.

Everflowering Candytuft

April—July ...

Indifference.

Evergreen Thorn

May

Solace in adversity.

Everlasting Pea

July, August

Lasting pleasure.

Eyebright

August

Visionary.

Fennel.

July, August

Worthy all praise ; strength.

Fern

Fascination ; magic ; sincerity.

Ficoides (Ice Plant)

July .

Your looks freeze me.

Fig .

May

Argument ; prolific.

Fig, Marigold ...

May, June ...

Idleness.

Filbert ...

February

Reconciliation.

Fir .

May

Time ; elevation.

Fir, Spruce

Farewell. [kindness.

Flax

June, July

Domestic industry ; fate ; I feel your

Flax-leaved Goldylocks

Tardiness.

Fleur-de-Lis

Tune, July

Flame ; I bum ; message.

Flowering Fern

June

Reverie ; dreams.

Fly Orchis

May

Error.

Fly-trap

July .

Deceit.

Fool’s Parsley ...

July, August

Silliness.

Forget-me-not ...

June — October

True love ; forget me not.

Foxglove

June, July .

Insincerity ; south.

Foxtail Grass ...

July .

Sporting.

Frankincense ...

April

Beware of false friends.

Franciscea Latifolia ....

May

The incense of a faithful heart.

Frog Ophrys .

June .

Disgust.

Fuller’s Teasel ...

July

Misanthropy; importunity.

Full-blown Rose

Beauty.

Do., Eglantine

June, July

Simplicity.

Fuchsia ...

June—August

Taste.

Fumitory

March

Spleen.

Furze .

June

Good temper.

Garden Chervil .

May, June ...

Sincerity.

Do., Ranunculus

Do.

You are rich in attractions.

Gardenia

June, July

Refinement.

Garland of Roses

Reward of virtue.

Genista

May, June ...

Neatness.

Gentian

August, September ...

Virgin pride.

Geranium, Dark

Summer and autumn

Melancholy.

Do., Ivy

Do.

Bridal favour.

Do., Lemon

Do.

Unexpected meeting.

Do., Nutmeg

Do.

Expected meeting.

Do., Oak-leaved

Do.

True friendship.

Do., Pencilled ...

Do.

Ingenuity.

Do., Rose-scented

Do.

Preference.

Do., Pink

Do.

Preference.

Do., Scarlet

Do.

Comforting; stupidity.

Do., Silver-leaved

Do.

Recall.

Do., Speedwell ...

May, June ...

Facility.

Do., Wild .

All summer ...

Steadfast piety.

Gladioli

1 June, July

Ready-armed.

248

The Language of Flowers.

tflofoers.

fflontljs of Jflotoering.

Sentiments.

Gillyflower

May

Fidelity in adversity.

Goat's Beard.

July .

Fickleness.

Goat’s Rue

Do. .

Reason.

Golden Rod

July — September

Precaution.

Good King Henry

August

Goodness.

Gooseberry

May

Anticipation.

Gorse, or Furze

June .

Love for all seasons.

Gourd

Extent ; bulk.

Grammanthes Chloraeflora ...

July

Your, temper is too hasty.

Grass

Submission.

Great Bindweed

July, August

Dangerous insinuation.

Guelder Rose ...

May

Winter ; age.

Guernsey Lily ...

September ...

Pride ; haughtiness.

Guinea-hen Flower

June .

Gambling.

Hair Grass.

June, July .

Discord.

Harebell...

} uly, August

Delicate and lovely as this flower.

Hawkweed

Do.

Quicksightedness.

Hawthorn

May

Hope.

Hazel

March

Reconciliation.

Heart’s-ease, or Pansy

May — September

You occupy my thoughts.

Heath

March — J uly

Solitude.

Helenium

August, September ...

Tears.

Heliotrope

June, July

Devotion ; I turn to thee ; faithfulness.

Hellebore

March, April

Scandal; calumny.

Helmet Flower (Monkshood)

June, July

Knight-errantry ; chivalry.

Hemlock

Do.

You will be my death.

Hemp

June .

Fate.

Henbane

June—August

Imperfection.

Hepatica

March

Confidence.

Herb Robert

July '.

Piety.

Hibiscus

June, October

Delicate beauty.

Holly

May, June ...

Foresight.

Hollyhock

June — September

Ambition ; fecundity.

Honesty...

May, June ...

Honesty; fascination.

Honey Flower ...

June

Love sweet and secret.

Honeysuckle, or Woodbine ...

June, July, October ...

Generous and devoted affection ; sweet¬
ness of disposition.

Honeysuckle, Coral

April, May ...

The colour of my fate.

Do. French ...

Do.

Rustic beauty.

Hop .

July .

Injustice.

Horehound .

Do. .

Frozen kindness.

Hornbean

March

Ornament.

Horse Chestnut ...

May

Luxury.

Horseleek .

July .

Vivacity.

Hortensia

April—July ...

You are cold.

Hounds Tongue

July .

Dispersion.

Houstonia

June, July .

Content.

Hoya .

July .

Sculpture.

Hoyabella .

Do. .

Contentment.

Hyacinth

March

Sport ; game ; play.

Hydrangea .

|anuary

A boaster; heartlessness.

Hyssop.

June, July ...

Cleanliness.

Ice Plant (Ficoides) .

July .

Your looks freeze me.

Indian Cedar.

May

Adoration.

Do. Cress .

July—October

Warlike trophy; resignation.

Do. Jasmine (Ipomsea)

July—September

Attachment.

Iris

March—August

Message.

Ivy

October, November ...

Fidelity ; marriage.

The Language of Flowers.

249

JFtofaers.

Ivy, Sprig of, with tendrils

Jacob's Ladder
Japan Rose
Jasmine, White
Do., Cape ...

Do., Carolina
Do., Indian
Do., Spanish
Do., Yellow
Jonquil ...

Judas Tree
Juniper ...

Justicia.

Kennedia .

Kingcup

Laburnum .

Lady’s Slipper.

Do. Smock ...
Lagerstrsemia, Indian...
Lantana ...

Lapageria Rosea
Larch

Larkspur .

Do., Pink ...

Do., Purple
Laurel, or Bay Tree ...

Do., Common, in flower
Laurel-leaved Magnolia

Laurestine .

Lavender
Leaves, Dead ...

Lemon ...

Leschenaultia Splendens
Lesser Celandine
Lettuce ...

Lichen ...

Lilac

Do., Field

Do., Purple .

Do., White

Lily, Day

Do., White

Do., Yellow

Lily of the Valley

Lime, or Linden

Ling .

Liverwort

Lobelia...

Locust Tree, Green
London Pride ...

Lote Tree
Lotus
Do. Leaf
Love in a mist ...

Love lies bleeding
Lucern ...

Lupine ...

& -

2 I

ftflontfig of JHotoering.

S'enthnmts.

Assiduous to please.

June — July ...

All summer ...
June, October
May — July ...

Do.

Do.

Do.

J uly — September
April, May ...

M ay
Do.

July

July, August
May

May

June

April

Juiy

June

May

March

June

Do.

July

April, May ...

Do.

July

December
J uly — September

June

Do.

May — July ...
June ' ...

April, May ...

Do.

Do.

Do.

May—July ...

June

Do.

May

July

April

August, September

May

June

Do.

] une — August
J une — September
J uly — N ovember
Tuly, August
June

May, June ...

Come down.

Beauty is your only attraction.
Amiability.

Transport of joy.

Separation.

Attachment.

Sensuality.

Grace and elegance.

I desire a return of affection.

Betrayal; unbelief.

Succour ; protection ; asylum.
Perfection of female loveliness.

Mental beauty.

Desire of riches.

Forsaken ; pensive beauty.

Capricious beauty; win me and wear me.
Quiet my heart.

Eloquence.

Rigour.

There is no unalloyed good.

Audacity; boldness.

Lightness ; levity.

Fickleness.

Haughtiness.

Glory.

Perfidy.

Dignity.

A token ; I die if neglected.

Distrust ; assiduity.

Melancholy.

Zest ; fidelity.

You are charming.

Prodigality.

Cold-heartedness.

Dejection ; solitude.

Forsaken.

Humility.

First emotions of love.

Youthful innocence.

Coquetry; emblem of France.

Purity ; sweetness.

Falsehood ; gaiety. [sweetness.

Return of happiness ; unconscious
Conjugal Love.

Solitude.

Confidence.

Malevolence; arrogance.

Affection beyond the grave.

Frivolity.

Concord.

Eloquence ; estranged love ; silence.
Recantation.

Perplexity.

Hopeless ; not heartless.

Life.

Voraciousness ; imagination.

250

The Language of Flowers.

JHoiwers.

Lychnis (Flos-circuli)
Lythrum

fHontjts of jHofomng.

July

August

Sentiments.

Religious enthusiasm ; wit.
Pretension.

Madder .

Madwort, Rock
Maize
Magnolia
Mallow ...

Do., Marsh
Do., Syrian
Do., Venetian
Do., Creeana ...

Manchineal Tree
Mandrake
Maple
Do., Sugar
Marigold

Do., African
Do., French
Do., Prophetic
Marigold and Cypress...
Marjoram
Marvel of Peru
May Rose
Meadow Lychnis
Meadow Saffron
MeadowSweet
Mercury ... ... *.

Mesembryanthemum ...
Mezereon
Michaelmas Daisy
Mignonette

Milfoil.

Milkvetch

Mint .

Mistletoe
Mitraria Coccinea
Mock Orange ...

Monkshood
Moonwort
Morning Glory'...

Moschatel

Moss

Moss Rose
Motherwort
Mountain Ash ...
Mouse-eared Chickweed
Mouse-ear, or Scorpion Grass
Moving Plant ...

Mudwort

Mugwort

Mulberry Tree, Black
Do., White

Mushroom .

Musk Plant
Mustard Seed ...

Myrobalan

Myrrh.

Myrtle.

J une — August
April, May ...

June

June — August
Do.

August, September ...

June

August

June

M ay

May, June ...

Do.

April

June, July, Oct., Nov.
August — November ...
Do.

Do.

Do.

J uly, August

August

May

July, August
September, October...
J uly, August...

April, May ...

June — October
March
October
June, October
June—September
J une — August
August, September ...
March — May

July .

May .

Tune

Do. .

June — September
April, May ...

June

August

May

All summer ...

June—October

July .

July, August
July — September
June
Do.

June — August

April

May

June, July

Calumny.

Tranquillity.

Plenty.

Love of nature.

Mildness ; sweet disposition.
Beneficence ; humanity.

Consumed by love.

Delicate beauty.

Will you share my fortunes ?
Falsehood.

Horror.

Reserve.

Sweetness of disposition.

Grief; uneasiness.

Vulgar minds.

J ealousy.

Prediction.

Despair.

Blushes.

Timidity.

Precocity.

Wit.

My best days are past.

Uselessness.

Goodness.

Idleness.

Desire to please ; coquette.
Afterthought; cheerfulness in old a
Your qualities surpass your charms.
War.

Hermitage.

Virtue.

I surmount difficulties.

Indolence ; dulness.

Counterfeit.

Chivalry; knight-errantry.
Forgetfulness.

Affectation.

Weakness.

Ennui.

Voluptuous love.

Concealed love.

Prudence ; with me you are safe.
Ingenuous ; simplicity.

Forget me not.

Agitation.

Tranquillity ; happiness.

Happiness.

I shall not survive you.

Wisdom.

Suspicion.

Weakness.

Indifference.

Privation.

Gladness.

Mildness ; love.

The Language of Flowers.

1 ?

: 5 1

jPototrs.

ffIoml)g of jHofotring.

Sentiments.

Narcissus .

March, April

Egotism ; self-esteem.

Nasturtium

June, August

Patriotism ; splendour.

Nettle, Burning

July, August

Slander ; cruelty.

Nettle Tree

April, May ...

Concert. [tion.

Night-blooming Cereus

Autumn

Transient beauty ; wealth of true affec-

Nightshade, or Bittersweet ...

June, July .

Truth ; silence ; hush 1

Oak . .

May

Bravery.

Oak, White

Do. .

Independence.

Oats .

June .

The witching soul of music.

Oleander

October

Beware.

Olive

July .

Peace.

Orange ...

June

Chastity ; bridal festivities.

Orchis

Summer

A belle.

Osier .

April

Frankness.

Osmunda

July .

Dreams ; reverie.

Ox-eye ...

June, July, Oct., Nov.

Patience ; a token.

Calliopsis

June, July ...

Beautiful eyes.

Palm .

Victory.

Pansy

May — September

Thoughts ; you occupy my thoughts.

Parsley ...

July .

Festivity ; have won.

Pasque Flower ...

May

You have no claims.

Passion Flower

July, September

Religious superstition.

Patience Dock ...

July .

Patience.

Pea, Everlasting

August

An appointed meeting ; lasting pleasure.

Do., Sweet .

June, July

Departure ; delicate pleasures.

Peach

April

I am your captive.

Pear

May

Affection ; comfort.

Pentstemon Azureum ...

July—September

High-bred.

Pennyroyal

July, August...

Flee away.

Peony

May, June ...

Shame ; bashfulness.

Pepper Plant ...

July .

Satire.

Peppermint

August

Warmth of feeling.

Periwinkle, Blue

May — July ...

Early friendship.

Do., White

July .

Pleasures of memory.

Persicaria, or Snake-weed

June .

Restoration.

Peruvian Heliotrope.

July .

Devotion.

Petunia ...

July, August...

Your presence soothes me.

Pheasant's-eye, or Adonis .

September, October...

Sad memories ; remembrance.

Phlox .

July, August...

Unanimity.

Pigeonberry

Indifference.

Pimpernel

June, July ...

Change ; assignation.

Pine

May

Pity.

Pine Apple

April

You are perfect.

Pine, Pitch

Spring .

Philosophy.

Pine, Spruce . .

Do. .

Hope in adversity.

Pink

July, August

Boldness.

Pink Carnation

Do.

Woman’s love.

Pink, Indian Double ...

Do.

Always lovely.

Do., do., Single .

Do.

Aversion.

Do., Mountain

July .

Aspiring.

Do., Red Double

July, August

Pure and ardent love.

Do., Single

Do.

Pure love.

Do., Variegated

Do.

Refusal.

Do., White

Do.

Ingeniousness ; talent.

Plantain

June, July ...

White man’s footsteps.

Plane Tree

April

Genius.

Plum Tree .

April

Fidelity.

Plum, Wild .

April, May ...

Independence.

4

252

The Language of Flowers.

jHotocrs.

ffitonttjs of JFIotoering.

Sentiments.

Plumbago Larpentoe.

June .

Holy wishes.

Polyanthus

June, July .

Pride of riches ; confidence.

Do., Crimson ...

Do.

The heart's mystery.

Do., Lilac

Do.

Confidence.

Pomegranate ...

August

Foolishness.

Pompon Rose ...

May

Prettiness.

Poplar, Black ...

March

Courage.

Do., White ...

Do. .

Time.

Poppy, Red

June .

Consolation.

Do. Scarlet ...

Do. .

Fantastic extravagance.

Do. White ...

Do. .

Sleep ; my bane ; my antidote.

Potato

July .

Benevolence.

Prickly Pear

Do. .

Satire.

Primrose

March—May

Early youth.

Do., Evening

July—September

Inconstancy.

Do., Red ...

May

Unpatronised merit.

Privet

May, June ...

Prohibition ; defence.

Purple Clover ...

All summer ...

Provident.

Purple Sandwort

August

Hatred.

Pyrus Japonica ...

February, October ...

Fairies' fire.

Quaker Grass .

June .

Agitation.

Quamoclit

lune — September

Busybody.

Queen's Rocket...

June .

You are the queen of coquettes; fashion.

Quince

May

Temptation.

Ranunculus, Wild .

May, Tune ...

Ingratitude.

Raspberry .

Do.

Remorse ; envy.

Ray Grass

Vice.

Red Bay .

May

Love’s memory.

Red Catchfly

Very dangerous.

Red Mulberry.

Wisdom.

Red Pine .. .

May

Penitence.

Red Pink

Lively and pure love.

Reed

August

Complaisance ; music.

Do. Split

Do. .

Indiscretion.

Rhododendron, or Bay Rose

June

Danger; beware.

Rhubarb

Mav

Advice.

Rock Rose, or Cistus ...

July, August...

Popular favour. [England.

Rose

Summer

Love ; genteel ; pretty ; emblem of

Do., Acacia

Do.

Elegance.

Do., Austrian ... ... ... . .

Do. .

Thou art all that is lovely.

Do., Bridal

Do. .

Happy love.

Do., Burgundy

Do. .

Unconscious beauty.

Do., Cabbage ...

June—August

Ambassador of love.

Do., Campion ...

June — July ...

Only deserve my love.

Do., Carolina ...

July .

Love is dangerous.

Do , China

March — October

Beauty always new.

Do., Christmas

December, January ...

Relieve my anxiety.

Do., Daily

Summer

Thy smile I aspire to.

Do., Damask ...

Do. .

Brilliant complexion.

Do., Deep Red

Do. .

Bashful shame.

Do., Dog

June, July .

Summer

Pleasure and pain.

Do., Full-blown

Beauty.

Do., Guelder ...

May

Winter; age.

Do., Hundred-leaved

Summer

Pride ; dignity of mind.

Do., Japan

Do. .

Beauty is your only attraction.

Do., Maiden Blush ...

Do.

If you love me, you will find it out.

Do., Multiflora

July .

Summer

Grace.

Do., Mundi

Variety.

4

The Language of Flowers.

2 53

jflofofrs.

Rose, Musk
Do., Musk Cluster
Do., Pompon ....

Do., Single
Do., Thornless
Do., Unique ...

Do., White

Do., White and withered
Do., Yellow

Do., York and Lancaster
Do., Full-blown, placed over
buds

Do., White and Red together
Roses, Crown of
Rosebud, Red ...

Do., White
Roseleaf

Rosebud Moss ...

Rosebay, Rhododendron
Rosebay, Willow Herb
Rosemary
Rudbeckia

Rue .

Rush .

Rye Grass
Buddlea...

Saffron .

Sage, Wild
Sage, Garden ...

Sainfoin

Saint John’s Wort .

Salvia, Blue

Do., Red .

Sandwort, Purple .

Saxifrage, Mossy
Scabious

Do., Sweet

Scarlet Auricula .

Scarlet Lychnis
Schinus

Scotch Fir .

Sensitive Plant.

Shamrock
Shepherd’s Purse
Siberian Crab ...

Silver Fir

Small White Bell-flower

Smooth Sowthistle .

Snakesfoot .

Snapdragon .

Snowball .

Snowdrop

Sorrel

Southernwood ... .

Sowthistle, Smooth .

Spanish Jasmine
Spear-Mint

Speedwell .

Spider Ophrys.

ffflontljs of JFIotomng.

July, September
Summer
May
Summer
Do.

Do.

Do.

tw

June

June, July

June

Do.

July

February

August

Do.

July

May

Summer

Sentimenta.

Capricious beauty.

Charming.

Prettiness.

Simplicity.

Early attachment.

Call me not beautiful.

I am worthy of you.

Transient impressions.

Decrease of love ; jealousy ; infidelity.
Union.

Secrecy.

Unity.

Reward of virtue.

Pure and lovely.

Girlhood ; heart ignorant of love.

You may hope.

Confession of love.

Beware ; danger.

Celibacy ; fidelity.

Remembrance.

Justice.

Disdain.

Docility.

Changeable disposition.

Good looks.

September ...

J une—August
July

June, July ...

J une — October
August, September
Do.

August

April, May ...

July—August
J uly — September
April

July, August

July

Spring

lune

July

March, April

May

Spring

July, September

July

April

June — August
J uly — September
January, February
June, July
July
Do.

April
August
May, August
May

Beware of excess.

Domestic virtue.

Esteem.

Agitation.

Animosity ; superstition.

Wisdom.

Energy.

Hatred.

Affection ; maternal love.

Unfortunate love.

Widowhood.

Avarice.

Sunbeaming eyes.

Religious enthusiasm.

Elevation. [feelings.

Sensibility ; bashful modesty ; delicate
Lightheartedness ; emblem of Ireland.

I offer you my all.

Deeply interesting.

Elevation.

Gratitude.

Calf love.

Horror.

Presumption; "No.”

Bound.

Hope.

Wit ill timed.

Jest; bantering.

Calf love.

Sensuality.

Warmth of sentiment.

Female fidelity.

Adroitness.

2 54

The Language of Flowers.

dHotorrs.

ffiDittlja of Jflohjmng.

■Sentimentg.

Spiderwort .

May, June ...

Esteem not love ; transient happiness.

Spindle Tree

May

Your charms are engraven on my heart.

Spiroca

April, May ...

Uselessness.

Spruce Fir

Spring

Farewell.

Squirting Cucumber ...

June, July ...

Critic.

Star of Bethlehem

r J

June .

Purity.

Starwort

August, September ...

Afterthought. [stranger.

Starwort, American ...

May—October

Cheerfulness in old age ; welcome to a

Stinging Nettle

July, August

Slander ; cruelty.

Stitchwort

January—July

Captivating purity.

Stock, or Gillyflower ...

J une — August

Lasting beauty ; bonds of affection.

Stock, Ten-week

May — November

Promptness.

Stonecrop

June, July ...

Tranquillity.

Straw, Broken ...

Rupture of a contract.

Do., Whole ...

Union.

Strawberry

Strawberry Tree, or Arbutus

May

September, October...

Foresight; perfect goodness.

Esteem and love.

Sundew

July, August

Greed.

Sunflower

July—September

False riches.

Do., Dwarf

August, September ...

Adoration ; your devoted adorer.

Swallow-wort ...

July .

Medicine ; cure for heartache.

Sweet Basil

July, August

Good wishes.

Sweet Briar

June, July ...

Poetry ; I wound to heal.

Sweet Flag

June

Fitness.

Sweet Pea

June, July .

Delicate pleasures ; departure.

Sweet Sultan

August

Felicity.

Sweet William ...

July .

Gallantry.

Sweet-scented Tussilage

March

You shall have justice.

Sycamore

April

Meet me.

Syringa .

May, June ...

Memory.

Syringa, Carolina .

Do.

Disappointment.

Tamarisk .

June, July ...

Crime.

Tansy, Wild .

August

I declare war against you.

Teasel

July

Misanthropy.

Tendrils of climbing plants ...

Lies.

Ten-week Stock

May — November

Promptness.

Thistle

July .

Austerity.

Thistle, Scotch ...

July, August

Retaliation ; emblem of Scotland.

Thorn Apple

August

Deceitful charms.

Thorn, Branch of .

Severity.

Thrift .

July, August

Sympathy; -mutual sensibility.

Throat wort

July .

Neglected beauty.

Thyme

July .

Activity ; courage.

Tiger Flower ...

July — September

For once may pride befriend me.

Traveller's Joy, or Clematis ...

August

Poverty ; safety.

Tree of Life

May

Old Age,.

Trefoil (Birdsfoot)

July, August

Revenge.

Trillium Pictum

May, June ...

Modest beauty.

Triptilion Spinosum .

July

Be prudent.

Truffle

Surprise.

Trumpet Flower

June

Separation ; fame. [lovely girl.

Tuberose

August

Dangerous pleasures ; I have seen a

Tulip

April

Fame.

Do., Red

Do. .

Declaration of love.

Tulip Tree

June . .

Fame.

Do. , Variegated .

April

Beautiful eyes.

Do., Yellow .

April, May ...

Hopeless love.

Turnip

Spring

Charity.

Tussilage, Sweet-scented

March, April

Justice shall be done you.

The Language of Flowers.

2 55

jHofoers.

iJSlontijs of JHofomng.

Sentiments.

Ulf.x, Furze, or Gorse

February, June

Love for all seasons.

Valerian Spur .

June

An accommodating disposition.

Valerian, Greek

July .

Rupture.

Venice Sumach

August, September ...

Intellectual excellence.

Venus’s Looking-glass

July .

Flattery.

Do. Trap ...

Do. .

Deceit.

Verbena

July, August

Sensibility.

Do., Pink ...

Do.

Family union.

Do., Scarlet

July — September

Unite against evil, or church unity.

Do., White

Do.

Pray for me.

Veronica

April — -October

Keep this for my sake.

Enchantment.

Vervain, or Wild Verbena .

J uly, August

Vetch, Bush

July .

Shyness.

Vine

June, July ...

Intoxication.

Do., Wild .

June

Foolishness.

Violet, Blue

April

Faithfulness.

Do., Dame ...

May, June ..

Watchfulness.

Do., Sweet ...

March, April

Modesty.

Do., White.

April, May ...

Purity of sentiment.

Do , Yellow ...

June, July ...

Rural happiness.

Virginian Creeper

Do.

I cling to you both in sunshine and shade.

Virginian Spiderwort ...

May, June ...

Momentary happiness.

Virgin’s Bower ...

Do.

Filial love ; artifice.

Viscaria Oculata

June .

Will you dance with me.

Volkameria

September ...

May you be happy.

Wake Robin .

Summer

Ardour.

Walnut

April

Intellect ; stratagem.

Wall-flower

May

Fidelity in adversity.

Water-lily, White

July .

Purity of heart.

Wheat ...

Summer

Riches.

Whin .

June, July ...

Enduring affection.

White Jasmine ...

June, October

Amiableness.

White Lilac

April, May ...

Youthful Innocence.

White Lily

June .

Purity and modesty.

White Mulberry

Do. .

Wisdom.

White Mullein ...

July, August

Good nature.

White Pink

Summer

Talent.

White Poplar ...

March

Time.

White Poppy ...

June.

Sleep ; my bane ; my antidote.

White Rose

Summer

I am worthy of you.

Do., Withered ...

Transient impressions.

White Thorn ...

Spring

Hope.

White Violet

April, May ...

Purity of sentiment.

Whortleberry ...

May

Treachery.

Wild Liquorice

July .

Your presence softens my pain.

Wild Spinach ...

June .

Goodness.

Willow

March, April

Forsaken.

Do., Herb

June, July .

Celibacy; fidelity.

Winter Cherry ...

July, August

Deception.

Wistaria

May

Welcome, fair stranger.

Witch Hazel

Do.

Spell bound.

Wolfsbane

June, July ...

Misanthropy ; chivalry.

Wood Anemone

Spring .

Sickness. [ness of disposition.

Woodbine

J une — October

Generous and devoted affection ; sweet-

Wood Sorrel

May

Joy.

Wormwood

J uly—September

Absence ; bitterness.

Xanthium .

July .

Rudeness ; pertinacity.

256 The Language of Floivers.

JHotoers.

f&mttfia of JHohjmng.

£>entimmta.

Xeranthemum ...

July.

Cheerfulness under adversity.

Yarrow .

August

War.

Yellow Carnation

Summer

Disdain.

Yellow Day-lily

Do.

Coquetry.

Yellow Gentian

June, July .

Ingratitude.

Yellow Iris

July.

Flame of love.

Yellow Jasmine

July—September

Grace and elegance.

Yellow Lily

Summer

Falsehood ; Gaiety.

Yellow Rose

Do.

Infidelity.

Yellow Violet .

Spring and autumn ...

Rustic happiness.

Yew

February

Sadness ; mourning.

Zephyr Flower, or Anemone

March — May

Expectation ; sickness.

Zinnia

June, July

Thoughts of absent friends.

PART II.

SENTIMENTS, AND THEIR REPRESENTATIVE FLOWERS.

Sentiments.

Absence .

Do.,* impatient of ...
Acidity

Acknowledgment
Activity ...

Acute sorrow

Admiration .

Adoration

Adorer, your devoted ...
Adroitness

Adulation .

Adversity, cheerfulness

under

Do.,

energy in

Do.,

fidelity in

Do.,

hope in

Do.,

Advice

solace in

Affectation .

Affection.

Do.,

beyondthe grave

Do.,

bonds of

Do.,

enduring

Do.,

generous and de¬

voted

Do.,

I desire a return

of .

Do.,

maternal

Do.,

wealth of true

jflobjers.

Wormwood.

Corchorus.

Bullace Tree.

Canterbury Bell.

Thyme.

Aloe.

Amethyst.

Cedar Deodora.

Dwarf Sunflower.

Spider Ophrys.

Cacalia.

Chinese Chrysanthemum.
Camomile.

Wall-flower.

Spruce Pine.

Evergreen Thorn.
Rhubarb.

Amaranth, or Cockscomb;

Morning Glory.

Pear ; Mossy Saxifrage.
Green Locust Tree.
Stock, or Gillyflower.
Whin.

Honeysuckle.

Jonquil.

Cinquefoil.

Night-blooming Cereus.

Sentiments.

Afterthought

Age .

Agitation

Alas ! for my poor heart

Always delightful

Always lovely

Ambassador of love

Ambition

Amiability

Amiableness

Amusements, frivolous .

Animosity

Anticipation

Antidote, my

Anxiety, relieve my

Anxious and trembling .

Architecture

Ardour...

Argument

Armed, ready

Arrogance

Artifice

Arts, the fine

Aspiring.

Assiduity

Assiduous to please

JH oiners.

Catesby’s Starwort ;
Michaelmas Daisy;
Starwort.

Guelder Rose.

Quaker Grass ; Sainfoin.
Deep-red Carnation.
Cineraria.

Indian Double Pink.
Cabbage Rose.
Hollyhock.

White Jasmine.

White Rose.

Bladder Senna.

St. John's Wort.
Gooseberry.

White Poppy.

Christmas Rose.

Red Columbine.
Candytuft.

Arum ; Cuckoo-fruit ;

Wake Robin.

Fig.

Gladioli. •

Lobelia.

Acanthus; Virgin’s Bower
Acanthus.

Mountain Pink ; Cam¬
panula.

Lavender.

Withered tendrils of Ivy

The Language of Flowers.

257

Sentiments.

jHofocts.

Sentiments.

JflotueriS,

Assignation .

Pimpernel.

Bravery ...

Oak.

Asylum

Juniper.

Bridal favour

Geranium Ivy.

A token ...

Ox-eye.

Bridal festivities

Orange.

Attachment

Indian J asmine (Ipomoea)

Brilliant complexion

Damask Rose.

Do., early...

Thornless Rose.

Bulk .

Gourd.

Attraction, beauty is your

Burn, I .

Indian Fig ; Fleur-de-lis.

only

Japan Rose.

Busybody

Quamoclit.

Attractions, you are rich in
Audacity ...

Garden Ranunculus.
Larch.

Calf love .

Smooth Sowthistle

Austerity ...

Thistle.

Call me not beautiful ...

Unique Rose.

Avarice

Scarlet Auricula.

Calm repose

Buckbean.

Aversion ...

Indian Single Pink.

Calumny ...

Hellebore ; Madder.

Bane, my

White Poppy.

Capricious beauty

Lady's Slipper ; Musk
Rose.

Bantering

Southernwood.

Captive, I am your

Peach.

Baseness ...

Dodder of Thyme.

Celibacy ...

Bachelor's Buttons; Rose-

Bashful modesty

Sensitive Plant.

bay ; Willow Herb.

Bashful shame

Deep-red Rose.

Charm of a blush, the ...

Cosmelia rubra.

Bashfulness

Peony.

Charming

Musk Cluster Rose.

Beautiful, call me not ...

Unique Rose.

Charming, you are

Leschenaultia Splendens.

Beauty

Full-blown Rose ; Daisy ;

Charms are engraven on

Daisy, parti-coloured.

my heart, your

Spindle Tree.

Beauty always new

China Rose.

Charms, mature

Cattleya.

Beauty is your only at-

Japan Rose. [Rose.

Do., deceitful

Thorn Apple.

traction

Do., your qualities

Beauty, capricious

Lady’s Slipper; Musk

surpass your

Mignonette.

Do., delicate...

Hibiscus.

Change

Pimpernel.

Do., divine ...

American Cowslip.

Changeable disposition...

Rye Grass.

Do., ill-natured

Citron.

Charity ...

Turnip.

Do., mental ...

Kennedia.

Chaste love

Acacifi.

Do., modest ...

Trillium Pictum.

Chastity ...

Orange.

Do., neglected

Throatwort.

Cheerful, always

Coreopsis.

Do., pensive ...

Laburnum.

Cheerfulness

Crocus.

Do., splendid

Amaryllis.

Do. under adver-

[mum.

Do., transient

Night-blooming Cereus.

sity

Red Chinese Chrysanthe-

Do., unconscious

Burgundy Rose.

Do. in old age...

Michaelmas Daisy.

Do., worth beyond ...

Alyssum, Sweet.

Chivalry ...

Aconite (Wolfsbane) ;

Belle, a ...

Orchis.

Helmet Flower, or

Be mine ...

Clover, Four-leaved.

Monkshood.

Beneficence

Marsh Mallow.

Claims, you have no

Pasque Flower.

Benevolence

Calycanthus ; Potato.

Cleanliness

Hyssop.

Betrayal ...

Judas Tree.

Cold, you are

Hortensia.

Betrayed ...

White Catchfly.

Cold-heartedness

Lettuce.

Betrayer, the

Dragon Plant.

Coldness ...

Agnus Castus.

Beware

Bay Rhododendron ;

Colour of my fate, the ...

Honeysuckle Coral.

Oleander ; Rosebay.

Come down

Jacob's Ladder.

Beware of excess

Saffron.

Comfort ...

Pear.

Beware of false friends ...

Franciscea Latifolia.

Comforting

Scarlet Geranium.

Be warned in time

Echites Atropurpurea.

Compassion

Allspice.

Birth .

Dittany of Crete.

Complaisance

Reed.

Bitterness

Wormwood.

Complexion, brilliant ...

Damask Rose.

Blackness

Ebony.

Concealed love ...

Motherwort.

Blessedness, Single

Bachelor's Buttons.

Concealed merit

Coriander.

Bluntness

Borage.

Concord ...

Lote Tree

Blush, the charm of a ...

Cosmelia rubra.

Confession of love

Moss Rosebud.

Blushes .

Majoram.

Confidence

Hepatica ; Lilac Polyan-

Boaster, a

Hydrangea.

thus; Liverwort.

Bold, you are too

Dipladenia Crassinoda.

Conjugal love

Lime, or Linden.

Boldness ...

Larch ; Pink.

Consolation

Red Poppy.

Bonds

Convolvulus.

Constancy .

Bell Flower.

Bound

Snowball.

Consumed by love

Syrian Mallow.

2 K

258 The Language of Flowers.

Sentiments.

jflofocrs.

.Sentiments.

JFtoincrs.

Contempt

Yellow Sultan.

Dispersion

Hounds Tongue, [bine.

Content ...

Houstonia.

Disposition, sweetness of

Ploneysuckle, or Wood-

Contentment

Hoyabella.

Do., changeable...

Rye Grass.

Contract, rupture of a ...

Broken Straw.

Do., an accommo-

Conversation delights me,

dating

Valerian Spur.

the variety of your ...

Clarkia.

Distinction

Cardinal Flower.

Coquetry ...

Day Lily.

Distrust ...

Lavender.

Coquette.

Mezereon.

Divine beauty

American Cowslip.

Coquettes, you are the

Docility ...

Bulrush ; Rue.

queen of

Queen’s Rocket.

Do me justice

Chestnut.

Could you bear poverty ?

Bro wallia J amisoni.

Domestic industry

Flax.

Counterfeit

Mock Orange.

Domestic virtue ...

Wild Sage.

Courage ...

Black Poplar ; Thyme.

Do not refuse me

Escholzia.

Crime

Tamarisk.

Doubt

Apricot Blossom.

Critic

Squirting Cucumber.

Dreams ...

Roval Flowering Fern

Cruelty

Stinging Nettle.

(Osmunda).

Cure

Balm of Gilead.

Dulness ...

Mitraria Coccinea.

Cure for the heartache ...

Asclepias.

Durability

Dogwood, or Cornel Tree.

Duration ...

Cornel.

Dance with me? will you Viscaria Oculata.

Danger

Bay (Rose), Rhododen-

Early Attachment ...

Thornless Rose.

dron.

Do. friendship

Blue Periwinkle.

Dangerous insinuation ...

Great Bindweed.

Do. youth

Primrose.

Dangerous, love is

Carolina Rose.

Education, good

Cherry.

Dangerous, very

Red Catchfly.

Egotism

Narcissus.

Death

Cypress.

Elegance

Rose or White Acacia.

Do., I change but in ...

Bay.

Elegance and grace

Yellow Jasmine.

Do., you will be my ...

Hemlock.

Elevation

Scotch Fir.

Deceit

Apocynum ; Dogsbane ;

Eloquence

Lagerstrsemia ; Lotus.

Venus’s Trap.

Emblem of England

Rose.

Deceitful charms

Thorn Apple.

Do. France

Lily.

Deception

Winter Cherry.

Do. Ireland

Shamrock.

Decrease of love

Yellow Rose.

Do. Scotland ...

Scotch Thistle.

Deeply interesting

Siberian Crab.

Enchantment

Vervain, or Wild Verbena.

Defence ...

Privet.

Energy

Red Salvia.

Deformity

Begonia.

Energy in Adversity

Camomile.

Dejection

Lichen.

Ennui

Moss.

Delay

Eupatorium.

Envy

Bramble ; Raspberry.

Delicacy ...

Bluebottle (Centaury).

Error

Fly Orchis . 1

Delicate and lovely as this

Do., Paternal ...

Cardamine. [butus.

flower ...

Harebell. [low.

Esteem and love

Strawberry Tree, or Ar-

Delicate beauty ...

Hibiscus ; Venetian Mai-

Do., not love

Spiderwort.

Do. pleasures

Sweet Pea.

Estranged love ...

Lotus.

Do. feelings...

Sensitive Plant.

Excellence, intellectual...

Venice Sumach.

Delightful, always

Cineraria.

Do., unpretending

Red Camellia Japonica.

Depart

Dandelion.

Excess, beware of

Saffron.

Departure .

Sweet Pea.

Expectation

Anemone (Zephyr Flower)

Desire of riches ...

Buttercup (Kingcup).

Expected meeting

Nutmeg Geranium.

Desire to please ...

Mezereon.

Extent

Gourd.

Despair .

Cypress ; Marigold.

Extinguished hopes

Convolvulus Major.

Devotion ... ...

Heliotrope.

Extravagance, fantastic

Scarlet Poppy. [liopsis.

Difficulties, I surmount...

Mistletoe.

Eyes, beautiful ...

Variegated Tulip; Cal-

Difficulty ...

Blackthorn.

Do., sunbeaming

Scarlet Lychnis.

Diffidence

Cyclamen.

Dignity .

Cloves; Laurel-leaved

Facility .

Speedwell Geranium.

Magnolia ; Elm.

Fairies’ fire

Pyrus Japonica.

Dignity of mind ...

Hundred-leaved Rose.

Faithful heart, the incense

Disappointment.

Carolina Syringa.

of a .

Frankincense.

Discord ...

Hair Grass.

Faithfulness

Heliotrope ; Blue Violet.

Disdain ...

Yellow Carnation ; Rue.

Fame .

Trumpet Flower ; Tulip

Disgust .

Frog Ophrys.

Tree. ,

The Language of Flowers.

2 59

Sentiments.

jHoforrs.

Sentiments.

jflotocrs.

Falsehood .

Apocynum (Dogsbane) ;

Gaiety .

Yellow Lily ; Butterfly

Yellow Lily ; Manchin-

Orchis.

eal Tree ; Bugloss ;

Gallantry

Sweet William.

Deadly Nightshade.

Gambling

Guinea-hen Flower.

Family union

Pink Verbena.

Game

Flyacinth.

Fantastic extravagance...

Scarlet Poppy.

Generous and devoted

Farewell ...

Michaelmas Daisy ;

affection

Honeysuckle, or Wood-

Spruce Fir.

bine.

Fascination

Fern ; Honesty.

Genius

Plane Tree.

Fashion ...

Queen's Rocket.

Do., modest ...

Creeping Cereus.

Fate

Flax ; Hemp.

Genteel ...

Rose.

Do., the colour of my ...

Coral Honeysuckle.

Gentility ...

Corn Cockle.

Favour, bridal ...

Ivy Geranium.

Girlhood ...

White Rosebud.

Do., popular ...

Cistus, or Rock Rose.

Girl, I have seen a lovely Tuberose.

Fecundity

Hollyhock.

Gladness ...

Myrrh.

Feeling, warmth of

Peppermint.

Glory .

Bay Tree ; Daphne ;

Feelings, delicate

Sensitive Plant.

Laurel.

Felicity

Sweet Sultan.

Go, let me

Butterfly Weed.

Female fidelity ...

Speedwell.

Good education ...

Cherry.

Feminine modesty

Calla ^Ethiopica.

Good looks

Buddlea.

Festivities, Bridal

Orange.

Good nature

White Mulberry.

Festivity. ...

Parsley.

Good, there is no u.nal

Fickleness

Pink Larkspur.

loyed

Lapageria Rosea.

Fidelity ...

Ivy ; Willow Herb ;

Goodness

Good King Henry ; Mer-

Lemon ; Rosebay ;

cury ; Wild Spinach.

Plum Tree.

Do., perfect

Strawberry.

Do., female ...

Speedwell.

Gossip

Cobcea.

Do., in adversity

Wall-flower.

Grace

. Multiflora Rose.

Filial love

Virgin's Bower.

Do., and elegance

. Yellow Jasmine.

Fine arts, the .

Acanthus.

Do., matronly

. Cattleya Pineli.

Fitness

Sweet Flag.

Do., winning ...

. Cowslip.

Flame

Fleur-de-lis.

Grandeur

. Ash Tree.

Flame of Love ...

Yellow Iris.

Gratitude

. Agrimony ; Canterbury

Flattery ...

Venus’s Looking-glass.

bell; Small White Bell-

Fleeawav

Pennyroyal.

flower.

Folly .

Columbine.

Greed

. Sundew.

Foolishness

Pomegranate; Wild Vine.

Grief

. Aloe; Marigold.

Footsteps, white man’s

Plaintain.

Foppery ...

Amaranth, or Cockscomb

Happiness .

. Mudwort; Mugwort.

Foresight

. Holly ; Strawberry.

Do., momentary..

. Virginian Spiderwort.

Forgetfulness

. Moonwort.

Do., return of ..

. Lily of the Valley.

Forget me not

. Forget-me-not ; Mouse-

Do., rural

. Yellow Violet.

ear, or Scorpion Grass.

Do., transient

. Spiderwort.

Forsaken.

. Garden Anemone ; La-

Happy, I’m too ...

. Cape Jasmine.

burnum; Lilac; Willow.

Do., may you be

. Volkameria.

Fortitude

. Dipteracanthus Specta-

Happy love

. Bridal Rose.

bilis.

Hardiness

. Cranberry.

Fortune, I offer you

. Calceolaria.

Haste, make

. Dianthus. [flora.

France, emblem of

. Day Lily.

Hasty, your temper is too Grammanthes Chlorse-

F rankness .

. Osier.

Hatred

. Basil.

Freeze me, your looks ..

. Ice Plant (Ficoides).

Plaughtiness

. Guernsey Lily ; Purple

Friends, beware of false

Franciscea Latifolia.

Larkspur.

Friendship

. Acacia.

Have won

. Parsley.

Do., early ...

. Blue Periwinkle.

Heal, I wound to

. Eglantine, or Sweet Briar.

Do., true ...

. Oak-leaved Geranium.

Heartache, cure for the.

. Asclepias.

Do., unchanging ..

. Arbor Vitae.

Heart! alas, for my poor Deep-red Carnation.

Frivolity ...

. London Pride.

Do., ignorant of love.

. White Rosebud.

Frivolous amusements ..

. Bladder Senna.

Do., purity of

. White Water-lily.

Frown will kill me, thy..

. Currant.

Do., the incense of

a

Frozen kindness ...

. Horehound.

faithful

.. Frankincense.

Frugality ...

. Chicory; Endive.

Heart’s mystery, the

.. Crimson Polyanthus.

260

The Language of Flowers.

Sentiments.
Heartless, not ..
Heartlessness
Hermitage
Hidden worth ..
High-bred
Holy wishes
Honesty ...

Hope .

Do., you may
Do., in adversity
Hopes, extinguished
Hopeless
Horror

Humanity

Humility

Hush

jRofoers.

... Love lies bleeding.

... Hydrangea.

... Milkvetch.

... Coriander.

... Pentstemon Azureum.

... Plumbago Larpentoe.

... Honesty.

... Snowdrop ; Hawthorn ;
White Thom ; Flower-
in'g Almond.

... Roseleaf.

... Spruce Pine.

... Convolvulus Major.

... Love lies bleeding.

... Creeping Cereus ; Man¬
drake ; Snakesfoot.

... Marsh Mallow.

... Broom ; Field Lilac.

... Belladonna; Nightshade,
or Bittersweet.

I AM worthy of you
I am your captive
I have seen a lovely girl
I love

I offer you my all
I offer you my fortune ...
I partake your sentiments
I surmount difficulties ...
I shall not survive you ...
I think of thee .,.

I turn to thee
I will think of it ...
Idleness.

If you love me, you will
find it out
Ill-nature
Ill-natured beauty
Imagination
Immortality
Impatience

Impatient of absence ...

Imperfection

Importunity

Impressions, transient ...

I’m too happy ...

Inconstancy

Incorruptible

Independence

Indifference

Indiscretion

Indolence
Industry ...
Infidelity ...
Ingeniousness
Ingenuity

White Rose.

Peach.

Tuberose.

Red Chrysanthemum.
Shepherd's Purse.
Calceolaria.

Double China Aster.
Mistletoe.

Black Mulberry Tree.
White Clover.

Heliotrope.

Single China Aster.

Fig Marigold ; Mesem-
bryanthemum.

Maiden-blush Rose.

Crab Blossom.

Citron.

Lupine. [Daphne.
Globe Amaranth ;
Yellow Balsam.
Corchorus.

Henbane.

Burdock; Fuller’s Teasel.
White and withered Rose
Cape Jasmine.

Evening Primrose.

Cedar of Lebanon.

White Oak ; Wild Plum.
Agnus Castus ; Ever-
flowering Candy-tuft ;
Mustard Seed ; Pigeon-
berry.

Common Almond ; Bul¬
rush ; Split Reed.
Mitraria Coccinea.

Red Clover.

Yellow Rose.

White Pink.

Pencilled Geranium.

•Sentfincntg.

Ingenuous

Ingratitude

Injustice ...

Innocence

Do., youthful
Insincerity
Insinuation
Inspiration
Instability
Intellect ...

Intellectual excellence ...
Interesting, deeply
Intoxication
Ireland, emblem of

J EALOUSY .

Test .

Joy .

Do., transport of
Joys to come
justice
Do., do me
Do., shall be done
Do., shall be done you
Do., you shall have ...

Keep this for my sake ...
Kindness, I feel your ...
Kindness, frozen
Knight-errantry

Lamentation.

Lasting love
Lasting pleasure
Let me go
Levity
Life

Lightness

Lightheartedness

Lily, painting the

Live for me

Lively and pure love

Looks freeze me, your ...

Love

Do., at first sight
Do., chaste
Do., concealed ...

Do., confession of
Do., declaration of
Do., decrease of
Do., first emotions of ...
Do., for all seasons
Do., happy

Do,, heart ignorant of ...
Do., hopeless

Do., I .

Do., is dangerous
Do., lasting

jflofoers.

Mouse-eared Chickweed.
Celery-leaved Crowsfoot ;
Wild Ranunculus; Yel¬
low Gentian.

Hop.

Daisy.

White Lilac.

Foxglove.

Bindweed.

Angelica.

Dahlia.

Walnut.

Venice Sumach.

Siberian Crab.

Vine.

Shamrock.

French Marigold ; Yellow
Rose.

Southernwood.

Wood Sorrel.

Cape Jasmine.

Celandine.

Rudbeckia.

Chestnut.

Coltsfoot.

Sweet-scented Tussilage.
Do. do.

Veronica.

Flax.

Horehound. [hood.

Helmet Flower; Monks-

Aspen Tree.

Chinese Primrose.
Everlasting Pea.

Butterfly Weed.

Larkspur.

Lucern.

Larkspur.

Shamrock.

Daphne Odora.

Arbor Vita;.

Red Pink.

Ice Plant (Ficoides).
Myrtle Rose.

Coreopsis Arkansa.
Acacia.

Motherwort.

Moss Rosebud.

Red Tulip ; Tulip Tree.
Yellow Rose.

Purple Lilac.

Ulex, Furze, or Gorse.
Bridal Rose.

White Rosebud.

Yellow Tulip.

Red Chrysanthemum.
Carolina Rose.

Chinese Primrose.

The Language of Flowers.

261

Sentiments.

jHototrg.

Sentiments.

jflotocrg.

Love, lively and pure ...

Red Pink.

My best days are past ...

Meadow Saffron.

Do., of nature ...

Magnolia.

Mystery, the heart’s

Crimson Polyanthus.

Do., only deserve my ...
Do., pure

Campion Rose.

Single Pink.

Nature, good.

White Mulberry.

Do., pure and ardent ...

Red Double Pink.

Neatness ...

Broom ; Genista.

Do., returned

Ambrosia.

Neglected, I die if

Laurestine.

Do., secret

Yellow Acacia.

Night

“No” .

Convolvulus Minor.

Do., slighted

Yellow Chrysanthemum.

Snapdragon.

Do., sweet and secret ...
Do., true

Honey Flower.
Forget-me-not.

Old age .

Tree of Life.

Do., unfading ...

Globe Amaranth.

Do., cheerfulness in

Michaelmas Daisy ;

Do., unfortunate

Scabious.

American Starwort.

Do., voluptuous

Moss Rose.

Only deserve my love ...

Campion Rose.

Do., woman's

Pink Carnation.

Ornament

Hornbean.

Do., youthful

Loveliness, perfected ...

Red Catchfly.

White Camellia Japonica.

Pain, pleasure and

Dog Rose.

Do., perfection of

Painting ...

Auricula.

female

Justicia.

Do. the lily

Daphne Odora.

Lovely, pure and

Red Rosebud.

Passion

Dittany of Crete.

Do., thou art all that is

Austrian Rose.

Paternal error

Cardamine. [Dock.

Love’s memory ...

Red Bay.

Patience ...

Easter Giant; Ox-eye ;

Lowliness

Bramble.

Patriotism

Nasturtium.

Lustre

Aconite-leaved Crowsfoot

Peace

Olive.

Luxury

Horse Chestnut.

Penitence

Red Pine. [slip.

American Cowslip ; Cow-
Pine Apple.

Magic .

Angelica; Fern.

Pensiveness

Perfect, you are ...

Majesty ...

Crown Imperial.

Perfected loveliness

White Camellia Japonica.

Make haste

Dianthus.

Perfection of female love-

Malevolence

Lobelia.

liness

Justicia.

Manners, roughness of ...

Borage.

Perfidy

Common Laurel in flower

Marriage ...

Ivy.

Perplexity

Love in a mist.

Maternal affection

Cinquefoil.

Persecution

Chequered Fritillary.

Do. love

Mossy Saxifrage.

Perseverance

Canary Grass.

Matronly grace ..

Cattleya Pineli.

Persuasion

Syrian Mallow.

Mature charms ...

Cattleya.

Pertinacity

Xanthium.

Meanness

Cuscuta.

Philosophy

Pitch Pine.

Medicine

Swallow-wort.

Piety

Herb Robert.

Meekness

Birch.

Do., steadfast

Wild Geranium.

Meeting, expected

Nutmeg Geranium.

Pity .

Pine.

Do. unexpected ...

Lemon Geranium.

Play

Hyacinth.

Meet me...

Sycamore. [anium.

Please, assiduous to

Sprig of Ivy with tendrils.

Melancholy

Dead leaves ; Dark Ger-

Do., desire to ...

Mezereon.

Memory ...

Syringa.

Pleasure, lasting

Everlasting Pea.

Do., love’s ...

Red Bay.

Do. and pain

Dog Rose.

Do., pleasures of ...

White Periwinkle.

Pleasures, delicate

Sweet Pea.

Mental beauty ...

Kennedia.

Do., dangerous

T uberose.

Merit, concealed

Coriander.

Do., of memory ...

White Periwinkle.

Do., unpatronised

Red Primrose.

Plenty

Maize.

Message ...

Fleur-de-lis ; Iris.

Poetry

Eglantine, or Sweet Briar.

Mildness

Mallow ; Myrtle.

Popular favour ...

Cistus, or Rock Rose.

Mind, dignity of

Hundred-leaved Rose.

Poverty

Clematis.

Minds, vulgar

African Marigold.

Poverty ? could you bear

Browallia Jamisoni.

Misanthropy

Aconite (Wolfsbane) ;

Power

Cress; Crown Imperial.

Fuller’s Teasel.

Pray for me

White Verbena.

Modest genius ...

Creeping Cereus.

Precaution

Golden Rod.

Modesty

Sweet Violet.

Precocity

May Rose.

Do., bashful

Sensitive Plant.

Prediction

Prophetic Marigold.

Do., feminine

Calla Hithiopica.

Preference

Rose-scented Geranium ;

Mourning

Cypress ; Yew.

Presence soothes me, your

Pink Geranium.

Music .

Reed.

Petunia.

Do., the witching soul of

Oats.

Presumption

Snapdragon.

The Language of Flowers.

%

262

.Sentiments.

JHofocrs.

Sentiments.

JFIafoers.

Pretention

... Lythrum.

Reward of virtue

Garland of Roses.

Prettiness

... Pompon Rose.

Riches

Buttercup; Wheat; Corn.

Pretty

... Rose.

Do., desire of ...

Kingcup (Buttercup).

Pride

.. Hundred-leaved Rose;

Do., false

Sunflower.

Amaryllis; Guernsey

Do., pride of ...

Polyanthus. [tana.

Lily.

Rigour

Branch of Thorns ; Lan-

Pride befriend me, for once

Roughness of manners ...

Borage.

may

... Tiger Flower.

Rudeness

Bur ; Xanthium.

Do. of riches

... Polyanthus.

Rural happiness

Yellow Violet.

Do., virgin

... Pink Gentian.

Rustic beauty

French Honeysuckle.

Privation

... Myrobalan.

Do. happiness

Yellow Violet.

Prodigality

... Lesser Celandine.

Do. oracle .

Dandelion.

Profit

Prohibition

... Cabbage.

... Privet.

Sad Memories.

Adonis (Pheasant's Eye).

Prolific

... Fig.

Sadness ...

Dead leaves ; Yew.

Promptness

... Ten-week Stock.

Safe, with me you are ...

Mountain Ash.

Prosperity

... Beech; Bryony.

Safety

Clematis.

Protection

.. Bearded Crepis ; Juniper,

Sake, keep this for my ..

Veronica. [Pear.

Provident

... Purple Clover.

Satire

Pepper Plant ; Prickly

Prudence

... Mountain Ash.

Scandal ...

Hellebore.

Prudent, be

... Triptilion Spinosum.

Scotland, emblem of

Thistle.

Pure and ardent love

... Red Double Pink.

Sculpture ...

Hoya. [over two buds.

Pure and lovely ...

... Red Rosebud.

Secrecy

Full-blown Rose placed

Pure love

... Single Pink. [lehem.

Secret and sweet love ...

Honey Flower

Purity

... White Lily ; Star of Beth-

Secret love

Yellow Acacia.

Do., captivating

... Stitchwort.

Self-esteem

Narcissus.

Do., of heart ...

... White Water-lily.

Self-sacrifice

Andromeda.

Quicksightedness

... Hawkweed.

Self-seeking

Sensibility .

Clianthus.

Sensitive Plant; Verbena.

Quiet my heart ...

... Lady's Smock.

Do., mutual

Thrift.

Ready-armed ...

... Gladioli.

Sensuality .

Sentiment, purity of

Spanish Jasmine.

White Violet.

Reason

... Goat’s Rue.

Do., warmth of ...

Spear-Mint.

Recall

... Silver-leaved Geranium.

Sentiments, I partake your

Double China Aster.

Recantation . .

... Lotus leaf.

Separation .

Carolina Jasmine ; Ash-

Reconciliation

... Filbert; Hazel.

leaved Trumpet Flower

Refinement

.. Gardenia. [gated Pink.

Serenade, a .

Dew Plant.

Refusal

... Striped Carnation; Varie-

Severity ...

Branch of thorns.

Regard

... Daffodil.

Shame

Peony.

Regrets follow you to the

Sharpness

Barberry.

grave, my

... Asphodel.

Shyness .

Bush Vetch.

Do., sorrowful

... Blue-bell.

Sickness

Anemone (Zephyr Flower)

Relief

... Balm of Gilead.

Silence

Nightshade, or Bitter-

Relieve my anxiety

... Christmas Rose.

sweet ; Belladonna ;
Lotus.

Religious enthusiasm

... Lychnis (Flos-circuli).

Do., superstition

... Aloe ; Passion Flower.

Silliness ...

Fool's Parsley.

Remembrance ...

... Adonis (Pheasant's Eye) ;

Simplicity

Mouse-eared Chickweed ;

Rosemary.

Do., unceasing American Cudweed.

Full-blown Eglantine ;
Single Rose.

Remorse ...

... Bramble; Raspberry.

Sincerity ...

Fern ; Garden Chervil.

Rendezvous

... Chickweed.

Single blessedness

Bachelor’s Buttons.

Repose

... Convolvulus Minor.

Singularity

Amaranth, or Cockscomb

Do., calm

... Buckbean.

Slander

Stinging Nettle.

Reserve ...

... Maple.

Sleep .

White Poppy.

Resignation

... Indian Cress.

Slighted love

Yellow Chrysanthemum.

Resolved to win ...

... Purple Columbine.

Smile, I aspire to thy ...

Daily Rose.

Restoration

... Persicaria, or Snakeweed.

Smiles

Crocus.

Retaliation

... Scotch Thistle.

Snare

Dragon Plant.

Returned, love ...

... Ambrosia.

Solace in adversity

Evergreen Thorn.

Revenge ...

... Birdsfoot Trefoil. [da.

Solitude ...

Heath ; Ling ; Lichen.

Reverie

... Flowering Fern, Osinun-

Sorcery .

Enchanter's Nightshade.

The Language of Flowers.

263

Sentiments.

Jflomcra.

Sentiments.

JHotoera.

Sorrow

Cypress.

Tranquillity

Rock Madwort ; Stone-

Do., acute

Aloe.

crop.

Sorrowful regrets

Blue-bell.

Treachery .

Bilberry; Whortleberry.

Sourness of temper

Barberry.

Trembling and anxious.;.

Red Columbine.

South

Foxglove.

Trophy, warlike ...

Indian Cress.

Spell .

Circoea.

True friendship ...

Oak-leaved Geranium.

Spell-bound .

Witch Hazel.

True love...

Forget-me-not.

Spleen

Fumitory.

Truth .

Bittersweet (Nightshade);

Splendid beauty

Amaryllis.

White Chrysanthemum.

Splendour

Sport

Austurtium ; Nasturtium
Hyacinth.

Unanimity .

Phlox.

Sporting.

Foxtail Grass.

Unbelief ...

Judas Tree.

Stability ...

Cress.

Unchanging friendship...

Arbor Vitae.

Steadfast piety ...

Wild Geranium.

Uneasiness

Marigold.

Stoicism ...

Box Tree.

Unexpected meeting

Lemon Geranium.

Stratagem

Walnut.

Unfading love ...

Globe Amaranth.

Strength ...

CedarofLebanon; Fennel

Un fortunate love

Scabious.

Stupidity ...

Common Almond; Scarlet

Union

York and Lancaster Rose;

Submission

Geranium.

Grass.

Unite against evil, or

Whole Straw.

Success crownyourwishes Coronilla.

church unity ...

Scarlet Verbena, [gether.

Succour ...

juniper.

Unity .

White and Red Ross to-

Such worth is rare

Achimenes Cupreata.

Unpatronised merit

Red Primrose.

Sunbeaming eyes

Scarlet Lychnis.

Unpretending excellence

Red Camellia Japonica.

Sunshine and shade, I

Uselessness

Meadow Sweet; Spiroca.

cling to you both in ...

Virginian Creeper.

Utility .

Dried Flax.

Superstition

Do., religious ...

St. John’s Wort.

Aloe ; Passion Flower.

Variety .

Mundi Rose.

Surprise ...

Betony ; Truffle.

Variety of your conversa-

Survive you, I shall not...

Black Mulberry Tree.

sation delights me, the

Clarkia.

Suspicion

Champignon (Mushroom)

Vice

Ray Grass.

Sweet and secret love ...

Honey Flower.

Victory

Palm.

Sweet to the sweet

Daphne Odora. [tan.

Virgin pride

Gentian.

Sweetness .

White Lily ; White Sul-

Virtue

Mint.

Do. of disposition

Honeysuckle, or Wood-

Do., domestic ...

Wild Sage.

bine ; Sugar Maple ;

Do., reward of ...

Garland of Roses.

Mallow.

Visionary ...

Eyebright.

Do., unconscious ...

Lily of the Valley.

Vivacity ...

Houseleek.

Sympathy

Balm ; Thrift.

Voraciousness

Lupine.

Tardiness .

Flax-leaved Goldylocks.

Vulgar minds .

African Marigold.

[row.

Talent

White Pink.

War .

Achillea Millefolia ; Yar-

Taste

Fuchsia.

Do. against you, I declare Wild Pansy.

Tears

Helenium.

Warlike trophy.

Indian Cress.

Temperance

Azalea. [flora.

Warmth ...

Cactus.

Temper is too hasty, your

Grammanthes Chlorae-

Do. of feeling

Peppermint.

Do., sourness of

Barberry.

Do. of sentiment ...

Spear-Mint.

Temptation

Apple ; Quince.

Warned in time, be

Echites Atropurpurea.

Thankfulness

Agrimony.

Watchfulness .

Dame Violet.

Thou art all that is lovely Austrian Rose.

Weakness

Moschatel; Musk Plant.

Thoughts of absent friends Zinnia.

Wealth of true affection

Night-blooming Cereus.

Do., you occupy my

Heart's-ease, or Pansy.

Weary me, you ...

Bur.

Thy smile I aspire to ...

Daily Hose. [Plant.

Welcome, fair stranger..

Wistaria.

Ties

Tendrils of Climbing

White man’s footsteps ..

Plantain.

Time

Fir ; White Poplar.

Widowhood .

Sweet Scabia.

Timidity ...

Marvel of Peru.

Will you share my for-

Token, a ...

Laurestine ; Ox-eye.

tunes? ...

Creeana Mallow.

Transient happiness

Spiderwort.

Win me and wear me ..

Lady’s Slipper.

Do. beauty

Night-blooming Cereus.

Win, resolved to

Purple Columbine.

Do. impressions ...

White and withered Rose

Winning grace.

Cowslip.

Transport of joy

Cape Jasmine.

Winter

Guelder Rose.

264

The Language of Flowers.

Sentiments.
Wisdom ...

Wishes, good
Do., holy

Wit .

Wit, ill-timed

With me you are safe ...

Witchcraft

Woman's love

Won, have

Worldliness

Worth beyond beauty ...

Do., hidden
Worth sustained by judi¬
cious & tender affection
Worthy all praise
Wound to heal, I

You are perfect ...

jflotoers.

White Mulberry Tree ;
Red Mulberry ; Blue
Salvia.

Sweet Basil.

Plumbago Larpentoe.
Lychnis (Flos-circuli) ;

Meadow Lychnis.
Sorrel.

Mountain Ash.
Enchanter's Nightshade.
Pink Carnation.

Parsley.

Clianthus.

Sweet Alyssum.
Coriander.

Pink Convolvulus.

Fennel.

Eglantine, or Sweet Briar.
Pine Apple.

Sentiments.

JJlohjcrs.

You have no claims ... Pasque Flower.

You may hope ... ... Roseleaf.

You weary me ... ... Bur.

Your charms are engraven

on my heart ... ... Spindle Tree.

Your looks freeze me ... Ficoides (Ice Plant).

Your simple elegance

charms me ... ... Diosma.

Your presence softens my

pain ... ... ... Wild Liquorice.

You: presence soothes me Petunia.

Youi qualities surpass

your charms ... ... Mignonette.

Youthful innocence ... White Lilac.

Do. love .Red Catchfly.

Youth, early .Primrose.

Zeal

Zealousness

Zest

... Arum.
... Elder.
... Lemon,

MODIFICATIONS OF THE FLOWER LANGUAGE.

“You may quarrel, reproach, or send letters of passion, friendship, or civility, or even of
news, without even inking your fingers .” — Lady M. IV. Montague.

If a flower be given reversed , its original signification is understood to
be contradicted, and the opposite meaning to be implied.

A rosebud divested of its thorns, but retaining its leaves, conveys the
sentiment, I fear no longer; I hope; thorns signifying fears, and leaves hopes.

Stripped of leaves and thorns, the bud signifies, There is nothing to hope
or fear.

The expression of flowers is also varied by changing their positions.
Place a marigold on the head, and it signifies Mental anguish; on the bosom,
Indifference.

When a flower is given, the pronoun / is understood by bending it to the
right hand ; thou , by inclining it to the left.

Yes is implied by touching the flower given with the lips.

No, by pinching off a petal, and casting it away.

/ am is expressed by a laurel-leaf twisted round the bouquet.

I have , by an ivy-leaf folded together.

/ offer you, by a leaf of the Virginian Creeper.

2 L

BOUQUETS AS EXAMPLES.

Be temperate in your taste.

1. Temperance .... Azalea.

2. Taste. Fuchsia.

Meet me to-night ; do not forget.

1. Meet me . . . . : Sycamore.

2. To-night. Night Convolvulus.

3. Do not forget . . . Forget-me-not.

May maternal love protect your early youth in in¬
nocence and joy.

Maternal love . . . Mossy Saxifrage.

Protect . .

Early youth
Innocence

5- Joy

Bearded Crepis.

Primrose.

Daisy.

Wood Sorrel.

Remember our rendezvous, but beware of a false
friend.

1. Remembrance . . . Rosemary.

2. Rendezvous .... Chickweed.

3. Beware of false friends . Franciscea Latifolia.
Do not refuse to come down and comfort my

solitude.

1. Do not refuse . . . Eschcolzia.

2. Come down .... Jacob’s Ladder.

3. Comfort. Pear Tice.

4. Solitude. Heath.

I am docile and dejected, do not refuse me.

1. Docile. Rush.

2. Dejected. Lichen-.

3. Do not refuse . . . Carrot Flower.

Let the bonds of marriage unite us.

1. Bonds. Convolvulus.

2. Marriage. Ivy.

3. Unite us. A few whole Straws.

My fortitude forsook me on your refusal to be mine.

1. Fortitude. Dipteracanthus Spec-

2. Forsaken. Laburnum. [tabilis.

3. Refusal. Striped Carnation.

4. Be mine. Four-leaved Clover.

I hope you may be happy, and offer you pecuniary
aid.

1. Hope. Flowering Almond.

2. May you be happy . . Volkameria.

3. Offer pecuniary aid . . Calceolaria.

Our unexpected meeting left but transient im¬
pressions.

Answer — Vulgar minds soon forget.

1. Unexpected meeting . Lemon Geranium.

2. Transient impressions . Withered White Rose.

3. Vulgar minds . . . African Marigold.

4. Forgetfulness . . . Moonwort.

I love to disappoint your curiosity.

1. Love. Red Rose.

2. Disappointment . . . Carolina Syringa.

3. Curiosity. Sycamore.

Your affectation and deceit I disdain.

1. Affectation .... Cockscomb Amaranth.

2. Deceit . Fly-trap.

3. Disdain . Yellow Carnation.

I sorrowfully regret your indifference, and am mel¬
ancholy on account of your coldness,
x. I sorrowfully regret . Blue-bells.

2. Indifference .... Mustard Seed.

3. Melancholy .... Dead leaves.

4. Coldness. Agnus Castus.

Your humility and amiability have won my love.

1. Humility . Broom.

2. Amiability .... White Jasmine.

3. Have won .... Parsley.

4. Love . . '. . . . Myrtle.

Your patriotism, courage, and fidelity merit ever¬
lasting remembrance.

1. Patriotism. Nasturtium.

2. Courage. Oak leaves.

3. Fidelity . Heliotrope.

4. Everlasting remembrance Immortelles .

Beware of deceit. Danger is near. Depart,
x. Beware ...... Oleander.

2. Deceit . Fly-trap.

3. Danger is' near . . . Rhododendron.

4. Depart . Dandelion.

By foresight you will surmount your difficulties.

1. Foresight . . . . . Holly.

2. You will surmount your

difficulties .... Mistletoe.

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